Re: Gnus email. -For dummies type information.

Re: Gnus email. -For dummies type information.

[Kai Großjohann]

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

> I'm hoping to provide a .emacs / .gnus file for our dept in the manner
> of the smb.conf file where many options are commented out, so that
> people uncomment to get more (and more crazy) features.  It seems to
> work well for samba, so why not gnus?  

This is a good idea.  I still think that people should understand
what they put in their init files, but for simple customizations it
is surely a good idea.

Here is a start:

;; Replace XX with the name of your news server.
(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "XX"))

;; IMAP users can use the following.  Replace II with name of your server.
(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
             '(nnimap "" (nnimap-address "II")))

;; POP users use the following.  Replace XX, YY, ZZ as appropriate.
(add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "XX" :user "YY" :password "ZZ"))
(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))

People who use IMAP might also wish to put the following line in their
~/.authinfo files:

machine XX login YY password ZZ

Replace XX with the IMAP server name, same as II above.  YY and ZZ
are login and password, respectively.

This far, it's easy.  But what to do for more complicated things?

kai
-- 
Silence is foo!

Re: Gnus email. -For dummies type information.

[Adrian Aichner]

>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

    Simon> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:
    >> Here is a start:
    >> 
    >> ;; Replace XX with the name of your news server.
    >> (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "XX"))
    >> 
    >> ;; IMAP users can use the following.  Replace II with name of your server.
    >> (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
    >> '(nnimap "" (nnimap-address "II")))
    >> 
    >> ;; POP users use the following.  Replace XX, YY, ZZ as appropriate.
    >> (add-to-list 'mail-sources '(pop :server "XX" :user "YY" :password "ZZ"))
    >> (add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods '(nnml ""))
    >> 
    >> People who use IMAP might also wish to put the following line in their
    >> ~/.authinfo files:
    >> 
    >> machine XX login YY password ZZ
    >> 
    >> Replace XX with the IMAP server name, same as II above.  YY and ZZ
    >> are login and password, respectively.
    >> 
    >> This far, it's easy.  But what to do for more complicated things?

    Simon> For complicated things, people should be able to do things
    Simon> themselves.  But providing a sample .gnus is perhaps a good
    Simon> idea altough quite un-emacsishy in style.  Should Gnus

XEmacs could even add a menu item under Help->Samples.

How about something like

View Sample gnus.el

along the lines of ...

      ("%_Samples"
       ["View Sample %_init.el" view-sample-init-el
	:active (locate-data-file "sample.init.el")]

in menubar-items.el?

    Simon> install your suggested .gnus if the user doesn't have it
    Simon> (and unless the user disabled this behaviour, I don't have
    Simon> or want a .gnus for instance)?  Everything could be
    Simon> commented out.

-- 
Adrian Aichner
 mailto:adrian@xemacs.org
 http://www.xemacs.org/

Re: Gnus email. -For dummies type information.

[Simon Josefsson]

Adrian Aichner <adrian@xemacs.org> writes:

>     Simon> For complicated things, people should be able to do things
>     Simon> themselves.  But providing a sample .gnus is perhaps a good
>     Simon> idea altough quite un-emacsishy in style.  Should Gnus
>
> XEmacs could even add a menu item under Help->Samples.
>
> How about something like
>
> View Sample gnus.el
>
> along the lines of ...
>
>       ("%_Samples"
>        ["View Sample %_init.el" view-sample-init-el
> 	:active (locate-data-file "sample.init.el")]
>
> in menubar-items.el?

This would be useful.

(OTOH this sort of points out one problem with the package system, I
guess that stuff ends up in core XEmacs while gnus really is a
package.  It should be possible to add these sort of things in the
package.  But this is a minor bug that causes few, if any, real
problems so it is probably easier to ignore it.)

Re: Gnus email. -For dummies type information.

[Kester Clegg]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
> 
> > But providing a sample .gnus is perhaps a good idea altough quite
> > un-emacsishy in style.
> 
> Yes, I now found another reason against a sample file: people who do
> simple customizations can just do M-x customize RET.
> 

But won't this write to your .emacs file?  I don't have a .gnus file, so
a sample could easily be provided where everything is commented to
explain how the example configuration would work but is commented out by
default.  I seem to distantly remember Xemacs providing this menu option
for a sample .emacs file, maybe something similar could be done for
.gnus?

I actually think the areas where people really need help are the more
complex areas, like filtering, archiving, posting styles, scoring,
etc. and it's in these areas people would benefit from seeing example
configuration code.

The argument that people should understand what they have in their
.emacs is a bit weak, given that customising emacs / gnus is so
fraught with complexity.  It's very easy to mess up your .emacs and to
put conflicting things in there.  Because it's complex, people need help
and a well laid out sample configuration would do that.

Just imagine if samba users had to start coding the smb.conf from
scratch tomorrow?  There'd be uproar, but that is exactly what we
currently have with emacs / gnus today.


-- 
************************************************************************
Kester Clegg				Dept. of Computer Science,
Research Assistant (UTC)		University of York, 
Tel (01904) 43 27 49			email: kester at cs.york.ac.uk
************************************************************************

Re: Gnus email. -For dummies type information.

[Simon Josefsson]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:
>
>> But providing a sample .gnus is perhaps a good idea altough quite
>> un-emacsishy in style.
>
> Yes, I now found another reason against a sample file: people who do
> simple customizations can just do M-x customize RET.

The gnus manual rarely mentions doing things with customize, so for
the time being it seems as if people who use custom are die-hard
custom users.  The sample could include a comment saying that she
should really use custom instead.

Re: Gnus email. -For dummies type information.

[Kester Clegg]

Yes, your sample gnus is exactly the kind of thing that could be
supplied with emacs/gnus!  I'll be modifying it for our own
emacs-user-group in the dept, come the big day when the mail server is
umount'ed once and for all...  ;-) and they're then forced to use imap
or pop!

-- 
************************************************************************
Kester Clegg				Dept. of Computer Science,
Research Assistant (UTC)		University of York, 
Tel (01904) 43 27 49			email: kester at cs.york.ac.uk
************************************************************************