Re: the laborious bootstrap process

[Karl Kleinpaste <karl@justresearch.com>]

Darcy Brockbank <darcy@hasc.com> writes:
> (1) Run a spellchecker before sending mail. Has anyone hooked ispell
>     to GNUS?

You should be able to sic an appropriate ispell-* function on
message-send-hook.

> (2) I'd like to have it poll my mail server for new mail every
>     five minutes or so, rather than having me do this manually. I
>     can't seem to find anything to set this behaviour.

My choice, slurped out of gnu.emacs.gnus quite some time back, and
then modified to my personal taste:

;;
;; automatic mail scan without manual effort.
;;
;; level-specified group scanner.
(defun gnus-demon-scan-mail-or-news-and-update (level)
"Scan for new mail, updating the *Group* buffer."
  (let ((win (current-window-configuration)))
    (unwind-protect
        (save-window-excursion
          (save-excursion
            (when (gnus-alive-p)
              (save-excursion
                (set-buffer gnus-group-buffer)
                (gnus-group-get-new-news level)))))
      (set-window-configuration win))))
;;
;; level 2: only mail groups are scanned.
(defun gnus-demon-scan-mail-and-update ()
"Scan for new mail, updating the *Group* buffer."
  (gnus-demon-scan-mail-or-news-and-update 2))
(gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-scan-mail-and-update 5 nil)
;;
;; level 3: mail and local news groups are scanned.
(defun gnus-demon-scan-news-and-update ()
"Scan for new mail, updating the *Group* buffer."
  (gnus-demon-scan-mail-or-news-and-update 3))
(gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-scan-news-and-update 20 20)

Then I put personal mail on level 1, mailing lists on level 2, and
basic NNTP groups on level 3.  Look at what `S l' does in *Group*.
Default creation level is 3.

> (3) This is shameful of me, but I can't seem to find out how to 
>     read a mail message which has been marked read, and is no longer
>     shown, but has not been expired. Something like a "show all read
>     articles".

Enter a group with an argument: `C-u 250 SPC'.  Previously-read
messages are marked in *Summary* with `O' ("old") and are usually blue.

> (4) I've been playing with the 'gnus-read-active-file' variable, and
>     the values t, nil, and some all have pretty much the same result.
>     The active file from my news server is about 1M, and takes about
>     10 minutes to get here. I'm only interested in reading one
>     newsgroup, and don't ever want to hear about others. What's the
>     proper way of dealing with this?

Odd.  Mine is set to 'some, and I have no trouble with this.

Just a shot in the dark: Did you properly quote in your setting?
(setq gnus-read-active-file 'some)