Agents?

Agents?

[Norman Walsh]

You know, I've been watching the discussion of agents go by for
weeks at least, and I'm just gonna up and 'fess my ignorance.
What in tarnation is an agent?  Is there some document somewhere
that describes, in general terms, what they are and why I might
want one?

I gather that it's related to offline news reading, and since
I've already admitted to idiocy, I'll keep right on going.  Is
there a document somewhere that describes how to set that up?
(Maybe that's the same document.)

I do offline mail reading with feedmail and that seems to work
fine.  For news reading, I got tired of waiting for NNTP
refreshes (my net connection is only 28.8) so I just slurp the
news up on my ISP, package it as mail, gzip it, and download it
(I can't post that way, so if I need to post I create a foreign
nntp group, post through that, and then discard it).  Maybe
there's a better way.

Yours in puzzlement,
--norm

Re: Agents?

[Norman Walsh]

> 
> The Quassia Gnus manual goes into more detail.

Thanks! ...but, aurgh!

My version of texinfo.tex can't process gnus.texi (it doesn't
like @iflatex).

Does anyone have a formatted version (for letter paper) that
they'd like to share?

--norm

P.S. What version of texinfo is required?  I thought I had the
most recent (2.218 from texinfo-3.11.tar.gz).

Re: Agents?

[Ezio Manini]

>>>>> "NW" == Norman Walsh <norm@berkshire.net> writes:

    NW> My version of texinfo.tex can't process gnus.texi (it doesn't
    NW> like @iflatex).

Make .texi.dvi

    NW> Does anyone have a formatted version (for letter paper) that
    NW> they'd like to share?

A4 only at http://www.piw.it/users/ezio/gnus.ps.gz

    NW> P.S. What version of texinfo is required?  I thought I had the
    NW> most recent (2.218 from texinfo-3.11.tar.gz).

It's not a texinfo problem, you need texi2latex.el 

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Re: Agents?

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:

> The Gnus agent is a kind of "virtual backend" for various Gnus backends.
> The agent (named after Forte's Agent and Free Agent software) allows Gnus
> to function as an offline message reader.

It's also a pun on the original pronunciation of GNUS.  You know.
"Gnusagent".

Ok.  You can stop hitting me now.  Ouch.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen