Re: How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Tim McNamara <timmcn@bitstream.net>]

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

> Thank you Tim McNamara !
>
> How do you figure out backend neither having any experience in
> thinking about it nor even knowing the significance of backend ?...
>
> Backend appears too complicated a thing for many people with no
> mastery or it would require dedicated study, too steep a learning
> curve of more than a mere few moments.

I don't know if there is a default backend for Gnus per se, I just
went with nnmail by chance, basically. I'm perfectly satisfied with
it.  The upside of Gnus is that it's very powerful with many many
options.  The downside of Gnus is that it's very powerful with many
many options.  While it's not user-unfriendly IMHO, it is not beginner
friendly.  It requires thinking about things that one may not know
how to think about yet.  

This is complicated by Emacs and Gnus using terminology (hooks, yank,
kill-ring, etc.) that is not shared with non-Emacs applications or
operating systems (Emacs predating most of them by a good many years).
Indeed, I think that's the steepest part of the learning curve.  If
one wanted to make Emacs more accessible to most users, the
terminology should be revised to be more consistent with what Windows
and Mac users are familiar with- cutting, pasting, clipboard, etc.  Of
course, the other side of the coin is that this would baffle and
obfuscate the entire installed user base of Emacs!

Users migrating to Gnus and Emacs from other Unix applications might
have an easier time than those of us coming from Windows or Mac OS/OS
X since we don't edit preference files directly and aren't used to
doing this.  For GUI-babies like me, whose first computer was a Mac
512Ke bought in 1986, having a nice little window (buffer) in which to
enter the relevant server and user information, which would then write
to .gnus, would make things much simpler.  I would think that the
Customize menu would be able to accommodate this.  BTW, it should be
easier to navigate to the Gnus customization group with the Options
menu- perhaps the menu should automatically display a "Customize
<active mode>" item?  This would prevent having to hunt through the
various Customize groups hierarchies.

If this isn't possible, I would think that one could set up a sample
.gnus for new users to edit, using nnmail (or nnimap, as the case may
be).  This would get them started quickly with a backend that's
pretty easy to use.