Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Frank Schmitt]

Hello

During the last two weeks I wrote a new FAQ for Gnus which is now in a
state where I'm ready with everything I wanted to include. The FAQ is
hosted in various formats at http://my.gnus.org/FAQ/

I'd appreciate any comments regarding the content of the FAQ, e.g.
-what is missing 
-what is explained in an unclear way 
-are there any errors or possibilities for optimization in the 
 Lisp examples?  
etc.

There's a mailinglist for the FAQ, but I'd suggest to discuss this first
draft in this thread. Further on, English isn't my primary language, so
corrections of spelling, grammar etc are welcome, too.

I'll send the FAQ to this group as a FollowUp to this posting.

Many thanks to the team from my.gnus.org and the guys from #mygnus on
irc.my.gnus.org for hosting the FAQ, creating the layout, doing
formatting and markup and other various help.

-- 
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Jesper Harder]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> During the last two weeks I wrote a new FAQ for Gnus

Excellent!

> I'd appreciate any comments regarding the content of the FAQ, e.g.

Some general comments:

* It would be nice with a slightly shorter line length in the plain text
  version.

* Where's the source?  I have some more trivial corrections (typos
  etc.), but it's easier to just fix them and send a diff rather than
  list all of them.

> 1.2.  What is the latest version of Gnus?                                                        
>       As of this posting, the latest Gnus version is 5.8.8. This version is very stable and      
>       should be the choice for all beginners.

Maybe you should mention what Gnus 5.9 is here.
                                                    
> 1.3.  Where and how to get Gnus?                                                                 
>       The latest version of Gnus is included in Emacs 21  
                  ^
                released
(just to make it clear).

> 1.4.  What to do with the tarball now?                                                           
>
>       [..] If you don't want to (or aren't allowed to) install Gnus
>       system-wide, you can add the following lines to your
>       ~/.xemacs/init.el or ~/.emacs:
>
>       (add-to-list 'load-path                                                                    
>                    "/path/to/gnus/lisp")                                                         

You also need something like

  (add-to-list 'Info-default-directory-list "~/cvsgnus/texi/")

to get the proper documentation for the installed version of Gnus.

> 2.2.  I'm working under Windows and have no idea what ~/.gnus means.                             
>       Well, than let's change this. The ~ means the home directory where Gnus and [X]Emacs look  
>       for the configuration files. So first thing you've got to do is create a suitable          
>       directory (no blanks in directory name please) e.g. c:\myhome. Then you must set the       
>       environment variable home to this directory. To do this under Win9x or Me include the line 
>
>       SET HOME=C:\myhome                                                                         
>
>       in your autoexec.bat, under NT, 2000 and XP

Is this step strictly necessary?  The last time I used Gnus under
ms-windows (win98) just doing `C-x C-f ~/.gnus' was enough to get the
correct file.

> 2.7.  And how about local spool files?                                                           
>
>       Or this if you don't want a nntp-Server as primary newssource:                             
                                  an NNTP server as primary news source:

> 2.8.  OK, News work now, but I want to be able to read my mail with Gnus, too. How to do it?     
>
>       However, the first thing to do is to tell Gnus in which way it
>       should store the mail, in Gnus terminology which backend to
                                                         back end
(this is the spelling used in the Gnus manual).

> 3.5.  How can I change the headers Gnus displays by default at the top of the article buffer?    
>       The variable gnus-visible-headers controls which headers are
>       shown, it's value is a
               its

> 4.4.  Can I set things like From, Signature etc group based on the group I post too?             
>
>       (setq gnus-posting-styles                                                                  
>         '((".*"  ;;default                                                                       
>            (name "Frank Schmitt")                                                                
>            (organization "Hamme net, kren mer och nimmi")                                        
>            (signature-file "~/.signature")                                                       
>           )                                                                                      
>           ((message-news-p)  ;;Usenet news?                                                      
>            (address "mySpamTrap@Frank-Schmitt.bla")                                              
>            ("Reply-To" "hereRealRepliesOnlyPlease@Frank-Schmitt.bla")                            
>           )                                                                                      
>           ((message-mail-p)  ;;mail?                                                             
>            (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.bla")                                            
>           )                                                                                      
>           ("^gmane" ;;this is mail, too in fact                                                  
>            (address "usedForMails@Frank-Schmitt.net")                                            
>            ("Reply-To" nil)                                                                      
>           )                                                                                      
>           ("^gmane.mail.spam.spamassassin.general$"                                              
>            (eval (setq mail-envelope-from "Azzrael@rz-online.de"))                               
>            (address "Azzrael@rz-online.de")                                                      
>           )                                                                                      
>          )                                                                                       
>       )                                                                                          

This would look much nicer without closing parentheses on lines by
themselves.  To quote the Emacs manual: "Lisp programmers find this
disconcerting".

> 4.5.  Is there a spell-checker? Perhaps even on-the-fly spellchecking?                           

>       Then you need ispell.el
>       [http://www.kdstevens.com/~stevens/ispell-page.html] and for
>       on-the-fly spell-checking flyspell.el
>       [http://www-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/personnel/Manuel.Serrano/flyspell/flyspell.html].

AFAIK, both ispell.el and flyspell.el are included with Emacs and
XEmacs -- so there shouldn't be any reason to install them by hand.

> 5.3.  How to search for a specific message?                                                      
>       There are several ways for this, too. For a posting from a Usenet group the easiest        
>       solution is probably to ask groups.google.com [http://groups.google.com],

But why the leave the comfort of Gnus when you can do Google Usenet
searches from within Gnus with `G w' ?-)

>       An other idea which works for both mail and news groups is to enter the group where the    
>       message you are searching is and use the standard Emacs search C-s,

Maybe `M-s', which also searches the body, should be mentioned, too.

> 6.4.  Which mailinglists and newsgroups are there?                                               
>       general questions and the ding mailinglist (ding@gnus.org) dealing with development of     
>       Gnus (this is the right place for bug reports, too).

Why not `M-x gnus-bug' (or `C-c C-b')?

> 7.2.  How to speed up the process of entering a group?                                           
>       To speed up building of summary say            

Other suggestions:

* Increase the value of `gc-cons-threshold' -- setting it to 4000000
  made a noticeable difference for me.

* Make sure that `gnus-use-correct-string-widths' is nil (unless you
  really care about alignment of CJK characters).  In Oort with Emacs 21
  it should _never_ be necessary to set it to a non-nil value.

>    NUA
>
>            NUA is an acronym for News User Agent, it's the program you use to

Is this term widely used?  (I haven't heard it before).  I think the
term used by Usefor is 'Posting Agent'.

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Don Saklad]

...Nifty !   Thank you Frank Schmitt !

Of course, another neat way to use gnus is together with http://groups.google.com
which among the other features highlights in color the correspondents and the
respondents writings.



I remain, as always, advocating for email in gnus even though it
didn't work at this end yet !




Cheers!
 oo__  dWs

http://saklad.org

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Don Saklad]

The difficulty people can encounter is with respect to the question...
how do you learn about the system environment?


a. What's needed is a list of the system commands or types of commands
   that give users information about the system that might be handy to
   know when setting up email in gnus.
   1 ...
   2 ...
   3 ...


b. What's needed is a list of directories and files where users might
   try looking for information about the system that might be useful
   to know in setting up email in gnus.
   1 ...
   2 ...
   ...


c. What's needed is a list of possible email lists archives on the
   system where users might try looking for information about the
   system that might be useful to know in setting up email in gnus.
   1 ...
   2 ...
   ...


d. What's needed are strategies users might try on their own to get
   the information about the system needed to set up email in gnus
   where the users might be a neophyte and not know how to interpret
   the information.
   1 ...
   2 ...
   ...


In every case there's no need to look to blame, scapegoat. What works
better is a method of continual improvement as the years go by taking
into account new developments and recognition of the variety of
communities' constituencies perceptions. Educational methodologies are
part of a discipline studied intensely by others that might be applied
to a variety of responsive materials as well as the people who develop
instructive techniques applying the discipline to themselves. It's not
for everyone to be an expert on such a discipline and yet benefit.
It's not for everyone to be an expect on the content of the email in
gnus technical documents and yet benefit.

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Don Saklad]

...Okay, I'll try again today.

One of the automatic translators
http://de.altavista.com/babelfish
http://babelfish.altavista.com

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Don Saklad]

For an automated translation, enter the link
[ http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=68wulmm2u1.fsf%40fencepost.gnu.org&output=gplain ]

at
http://de.altavista.com/babelfish

Guide to Problematical Don Saklad Use (was: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ)

[Robin S. Socha]

* Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net> writes:
> kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>> Dan Saklad is still a moron:

>>> The difficulty people can encounter is with respect to the
>>> question...  how do you learn about the system environment?
>> 
>> You keep asking this question over and over, and the answer remains
>> the same: ask your system administrator.  That's the best I can do,
>> even though you might not like this answer.
> 
> The problem is that many newbies they _are_ the sysadmins--and
> they really don't know what they're doing. 

"This is UNIX. Stop acting so helpless."(DJB)

> Here they are with an incredibly fine-tuned computing machine, and
> they need some help figuring out how to use it. 

Well, yes. And USENET is organized according to topics. This is *not*
comp.os.linux.answers. This isn't a UNIX newsgroup, either. Miss Saklad
is trying to make one believe that the Gnus FAQ needs instructions to
admin your operating system. Well, I'm sure you'll help her write the
documents necessary to cover *ALL* of these:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs.html#Platforms>

> Very few folks buy a computer for a computer; most buy a computer for
> a word processort, a financial calculator &c.  Thus it would seem to
> me that for many, their introduction to system administration might
> come from configuring emacs, GnuCash or gnus.  Sad but true.

Yes. So? This is totally irrelevant regarding the problem in
question. Frank is trying to overhaul the Gnus FAQ. If you want to
contribute, well, that's great. As for Miss Saklad:
<http://templeofhate.com/users/rsocha/rant/dsaklad.php>

Re: -typos. Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Frank Schmitt]

Don Saklad <dsaklad@gnu.org> writes:

>                 It looked like a typo at the second word...
>
> 2.10. At office we use one of those MS Exchange servers, can I use
> Gnus to read my mail from it?

I don't see a misspelling in office, should I use a different term, or
what do you mean?

-- 
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Frank Schmitt]

Derrell.Lipman@UnwiredUniverse.com writes:

> I was thinking more of the issues that have been discussed here recently,
> where Rmail is working (or VM or ...) which can provide some insight into what
> to select mail-sources to.  Once new mail can be received, one can worry about
> how to import old mail.

Thinking one more time about this, I'm wondering if this really makes
much sense. I mean why should somebody have problems telling Gnus where
to fetch mail from if he was able to tell it another mail reader. (Don
doesn't count, his case is uhm, very special)

-- 
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Derrell.Lipman]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> Derrell.Lipman@UnwiredUniverse.com writes:
>
>> I was thinking more of the issues that have been discussed here recently,
>> where Rmail is working (or VM or ...) which can provide some insight into
>> what to select mail-sources to.  Once new mail can be received, one can
>> worry about how to import old mail.
>
> Thinking one more time about this, I'm wondering if this really makes
> much sense. I mean why should somebody have problems telling Gnus where
> to fetch mail from if he was able to tell it another mail reader. (Don
> doesn't count, his case is uhm, very special)

Notwithstanding the "special case", emacs doesn't exactly make it trivial to
know what variable does what.  Your point is well taken, though.  Maybe a
table showing what variable to grok (Rmail, VM), or what configuration file to
look in (other email user agents), would be as adequate as a full description
of moving from X to gnus.

Cheers,

Derrell

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Robin S. Socha]

* Kester Clegg <kester@RemoveThisBit.cs.york.ac.uk> writes:

[...]
> What about also mentioning BBDB as a more sophisticated option?

What about fixing your broken address (it's <kester@cs.york.ac.uk>,
right?) and reading the document you're talking about?
<http://my.gnus.org/faq/html-nochunks/#id2786654>

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Kai Großjohann]

Frank Schmitt <usereplyto@Frank-Schmitt.net> writes:

> kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai Großjohann) writes:
>
>> Yes, maybe a progn would be nice:
>>
>> (eval-after-load "mm-decode"
>>  '(progn
>>     (add-to-list ...)
>>     (add-to-list ...)))
>>
>> The indentation of the above snippet is wrong.
>
> What's wrong with it

I don't know.  I wasn't in Lisp mode when I wrote it.  Just do TAB on
each line, or C-M-\ on the region.  Then you don't have to think
about it ;-)
-- 
Ambibibentists unite!

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Adam Sjøgren]

On Sun, 05 Jan 2003 17:33:41 -0500, Robin S Socha wrote:

> "Note to experienced users: Please don't encourage anti-support
> behavior.  Don't try to answer questions from users who don't
> provide the necessary information. Guessing what they did is an
> incredible waste of time." (DJB)

Well, I think DJB is wrong on a number of issues. The problem here is
that a waste of time can often be fun.

> Miss Saklad has an admin. Let him solve her problems. Somebody
> suffciently clueless not to understand "man ls" should not be
> running Gnus on a Unix system. YMMV.

YMMV, indeed.


  Best regards,

-- 
 "What about 'swing'?"                                         Adam Sjøgren
 "Swing? That's a good message."                          asjo@koldfront.dk

Re: Draft 1 for a new Gnus FAQ

[Derrell.Lipman]

Don Saklad <dsaklad@nestle.ai.mit.edu> writes:

> If you would, please let me know any little thing, anything else about
> how to get set up running email in gnus. Currently, I use rmail in emacs.

Since Rmail is currently working, your Rmail settings can help provide the
settings for gnus.  What is your current value of rmail-primary-inbox-list?

In a working Rmail environment, put your cursor at the end of the following
line, type C-x C-e, and send us the output.

  (describe-variable 'rmail-primary-inbox-list)

(If you think about it some, the output of the above command, along with the
gnus FAQ, should give you the information you need to get email working with
gnus.  If you can get it working yourself with this info, don't bother to send
us the output of the command; just let us know you got it working.)

Derrell