Re: FAQ for gnu.emacs.gnus

Re: FAQ for gnu.emacs.gnus

[Dave Bennett]

Galen Boyer <galenboyer@hotpop.com> writes:

> So, you are suggesting that you don't want to take the time to learn how
> to use Gnus but you want to learn how to use Gnus anyways?
> -- 
> Galen deForest Boyer
> Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

How about, "One should not have to become an elisp programmer or have
to sort through scores of pages of the FAQ or manual or have to
decipher possibly hundreds of list variables to set up email?  Those
should not be part of the "learning how to use gnus anyways"
experience.  No one will ever learn how to use gnus if they cannot get
it installed.  You have to actually have a bicycle before you can
learn how to ride one.

Like Don I also have gnus working correctly with newsgroups, but
cannot get it to work with my pop3 server.  I have tried every example
in the FAQ and in the manual that even mentions pop3 to no avail.  I
have also tried at least 50 seemingly sensible modifications or
alterations to the pitiful fragments present therein with no results.
In fact, gnus is so pathetic that it doesn't generate _any_ meaningful
error messages to the emacs messages buffer.  With all of the
modifications I've made to my .gnus file in an attempt to get gnus
working with a pop3 server, they have all generated exactly the same
text in the messages buffer.

Comparatively speaking, getting pine to work with a pop3 email server
took less than 2 minutes.  And that was manually editing .pinerc.
Getting Kmail to work took less than 10 seconds.  mutt took about two
minutes as well.  To get gnus working with newsgroups took about 2
minutes as well.

I really like the gnus style for newsgroups and would like to extend
it to my email.  But without even one complete, working example of
email access in either the FAQ or the manual, and no sample .gnus file
anywhere (except for a couple I found on a French gnus page that also
do not work), it is not a task for a neophyte nor even an experienced
user attempting to migrate from another mail package.

What is needed in the FAQ is at least one sample .gnus file for each
type of server .gnus will support.  When people new to gnus ask
questions, it can then be suggested that they use one of these sample
.gnus files to get started and once that is working, to introduce
trackable modifications to that file to customize their installation.
If the sample file doesn't work, it will at least give a consistent
starting point to those on this newsgroup willing to provide
assistance in troubleshooting their system.

The FAQ and the manual both are seriously lacking in any kind of
examples.  Endless listing of functions and value settings without any
examples of them in use are pretty much useless.  At least showing the
effect of their implementation instead of links to other things the
manual seemingly believes you should already know would go a long ways
towards easing the understanding.

Endless replies to rtfm or posting a link to a useless FAQ or manual
helps no one.  And the subsequent repeated questions and posts from
confused user-wannabes generate more annoyance to those of you already
using the product successfully.

Yes, I am willing and available to rewrite the manual and the FAQ-
with working examples.  I have abundant technical and writing
experience and will invest the time needed to do this job "right".
But only if existing users, authors, and maintainers of gnus are
willing to answer "obvious" questions and test examples on types of
systems that I do not have access to.

The way I see it, the FAQ and manual need to be tiered.  One part that
is complete in and of itself for people who just want to set up gnus
and use it, not understand it.  This is the way things are for
99-44/100% of computer users.  Another section that goes further for
those wanting to tweak or customize their installation.  And a third
section for those who would undertake fixing, modifying or extending
the product.

Re: FAQ for gnu.emacs.gnus

[Kai Großjohann]

Dave Bennett <dbennett@micoks.net> writes:

> kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de (Kai =?iso-8859-1?q?Gro=DFjohann?=) writes:
>
>> I wonder what might be the problem...  Ah!  You're using Gnus 5.7, and
>> all the documentation on the web refers to 5.8 or higher, I guess.
>
> I didn't see anything that would indicate such a radical difference
> between 5.7 and 5.8 in the text of the documentation or FAQs.

Well, one difference between 5.7 and 5.8 is that the way to specify
how Gnus should fetch mail.

(setenv "MAILHOST" "your.pop.server")
(setq nnmail-spool-file "po:your.pop.account")

The above is for 5.7, I think.  I can't check and my memory is
faulty, so please don't beat me up if there is an error there.  Note
that the "po:" string is literal wereas your.pop.account and
your.pop.server are placeholders.

(setq mail-sources '((pop :server "your.pop.server"
                          :user "your.pop.account"
                          ;; May omit the password stanza.
                          :password "your.password")))

This ought to work with 5.8.

-- 
~/.signature is: umop ap!sdn    (Frank Nobis)

(setenv "MAILHOST" "your.pop.server") (setq nnmail-spool-file "po:your.pop.account")

[Don Saklad]

                Thank you Kai Grossjohann! ( Gro|3johann? GroBjohann? )

                Is that for the .emacs ?...

(setenv "MAILHOST" "your.pop.server")
(setq nnmail-spool-file "po:your.pop.account")



                This is the .emacs at this side currently


                (menu-bar-mode -1)
                (display-time-mode 1)
                (column-number-mode 1)
                (put 'eval-expression 'disabled nil)
                
                (put 'downcase-region 'disabled nil)
                (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.mit.edu"))   ; maybe fix this
                (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
                      '((nnml "")))
                (setq nnmail-spool-file "/var/spool/mail/dsaklad")
                
                ;(load "rmail-spam-filter.el")
                (require 'rmail)
                ;(load "get-new-mail-for-spam-filter.el")

Re: (setenv "MAILHOST" "your.pop.server") (setq nnmail-spool-file "po:your.pop.account")

[Kai Großjohann]

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

> a. What's the difference between using .emacs or .gnus or using both?...

It is a matter of taste, as I said previously.

> b. What should be the modification for this here .emacs in Gnus v.5.7
>
>    (menu-bar-mode -1)
>    (display-time-mode 1)
>    (column-number-mode 1)
>    (put 'eval-expression 'disabled nil)
>    
>    (put 'downcase-region 'disabled nil)
>    (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.mit.edu"))   ; maybe fix this
>    (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
>    	 '((nnml "")))
>    (setq nnmail-spool-file "/var/spool/mail/dsaklad")

The above line needs to be changed, according to my previous message.

>    ;(load "rmail-spam-filter.el")
>    (require 'rmail)
>    ;(load "get-new-mail-for-spam-filter.el")

The setenv statement from my previous message needs to be added.  You
could add it at the end or directly after the nnmail-spool-file
statement.  It is a matter of taste.

-- 
Do not be ashamed of ambibibentism.

Re: (setenv "MAILHOST" "your.pop.server") (setq nnmail-spool-file "po:your.pop.account")

[Kai Großjohann]

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

>                 Here's what appeared on the bottom line
> movemail: Error connecting to POP server: Could not determine POP password (1 return).  Continue? (yes or no)

Did Emacs ask you for the password?  It should do that I think.
-- 
Ambibibentists unite!

Re: FAQ for gnu.emacs.gnus

[Galen Boyer]

On 20 Dec 2002, dbennett@micoks.net wrote:

> How about, "One should not have to become an elisp programmer or have
> to sort through scores of pages of the FAQ or manual or have to
> decipher possibly hundreds of list variables to set up email?  Those
> should not be part of the "learning how to use gnus anyways"
> experience.  No one will ever learn how to use gnus if they cannot get
> it installed.  You have to actually have a bicycle before you can
> learn how to ride one.
> 
> Like Don I also have gnus working correctly with newsgroups, but
> cannot get it to work with my pop3 server.  

To preface this posting, I love Emacs and enjoy almost all of my time
with it.  In this posting, I'm just relaying observations I've had as
I've added more and more functionality to my Emacs environment.

I had loads of frustration with Gnus early in my usage but these came
from the fact that I had never read newsgroups at all, with any other
reader, and I had never downloaded mail to read with any other email
reader so I didn't know anything about the protocals and beyond that,
Gnus presents its own version of these things with the "virtual server"
idea.  If I knew what the definitions of industry terms where, nntp,
pop, imap, I probably would have had a much easier time using Gnus early
on.

But, I think Emacs has alot of experiences like that.  It is easier to
start using Emacs for a particular purpose if you have already
accomplished that purpose in some other environment.  Take a simplistic
Email/News interface like Outlook Express as an example (I looked at the
dotfile generator and the following painpoints seems to be solved there,
but I think the discussion is still relevant).  During initially setting
up one's mail retrieval mechanism, you are presented with a dropdown
dialog asking you if you have a POP or IMAP server.  Now, it doesn't go
so far as to tell you what those things mean, but it does tell you your
choices, directly while setting up.  So, you might stop and go figure
out what they mean and then come back and choose.  With Gnus, you might
take awhile to understand that POP and IMAP are actually the choices
(and in my case, this took a good long while cause I had never heard of
these terms) and that they are the "main" choices.  Then you could go
figure out how to set up your .gnus to make it happen.

On the flip side, one wants to be a power user of any system, one needs
to be given access to "underneath".  It is a give and take, but the
prompting type help is where Emacs will probably always be lacking.
Emacs doesn't "notice" that a package has never been used, and therefore
send the user through a particular dialog to get them started.  The user
has to read the apropos documentation (which for gnus, doesn't seem to
point to the dotfile generation) and then open the correct files and
then type in the correct stuff in the correct format.  This can be a
daunting task when things "just work" in other environments one is used
to. 

Even in customize, I don't know the "choices".  I'm only protected from
the syntax.  I actually think the "choices" are probably more the issue
than elisp syntax.  Protection from the syntax is the least of my
worries, and not even a worry.  Knowing what to type is usually the
bigger challenge.

I don't even think I have a suggestion, or a real issue, but I have
thought through this posting 
-- 
Galen deForest Boyer
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Re: FAQ for gnu.emacs.gnus

[Robin S. Socha]

* Kai Großjohann <kai.grossjohann@uni-duisburg.de> writes:
> Dave Bennett <dbennett@micoks.net> writes:

>> I really don't expect you to waste your time answering this because I
>> doubt that I pursue it any further.
> 
> It's a pity.  There is a bug in the dotfile generator: it omits the
> mail-sources setting.
> 
> (setq mail-sources '((pop :server "server.name"
>                           :user   "user.name"
>                           :password "verysecret")))
> 
> The above lines should be added to the .gnus file thus generated.

I've never used it. This is for pop only, right? If so, I need to fix
this stuff.

> I shall report that bug now.

Thanks.

Re: FAQ for gnu.emacs.gnus

[Glyn Millington]

D. Goel <deego@gnufans.org> writes:

>> irc.my.gnus.org   #mygnus
>
> hm, i wonder if that was a joke :) 

Not entirely!  I wondered if Mr Saklad might benefit from that kind of help.

> there's no one there as of this time.  

Ten listed just now but very quiet

> there are always atleast 50 people on #emacs on irc.openprojects.net
> (port 6667)

Hmmm - will take a look!



Glyn

Re: FAQ for gnu.emacs.gnus

[Martin Christensen]

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>>>>> "Glyn" == Glyn Millington <glyn@millingtons.org> writes:
[irc.my.gnus.org]
>> there's no one there as of this time.
Glyn> Ten listed just now but very quiet

I've always been able to find help the few times I've been there to
look for it. Especially Robin seems to be ever-present and, despite
what he's trying to convince us of himself in this NG, both helpful
and patient (at least to me). :-)

Martin

- -- 
Homepage:       http://www.cs.auc.dk/~factotum/
GPG public key: http://www.cs.auc.dk/~factotum/gpgkey.txt
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Re: FAQ for gnu.emacs.gnus

[urfaust]

Don Saklad <dsaklad@gnu.org> writes:

Oh BTW, when I posted the sample dotfile, I put in Galen Boyer's name.

This was a mistake since I thought that Galen was the one having the 
problem with Gnus. :-(

My apologies to Galen. 

I am just a poor little newbie to gnus and am so sorry
that I promise that I will go to bed without dinner for the next
eleventeen days . :-)