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Archive-name: gnus-faq
Posting-frequency: monthly (on or about the 19th)
Last-modified: Jun 25 12:33
Gnus 5.x Frequently Asked Questions
------------------------------
Subject: Introduction
This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list.
Gnus is a Usenet Newsreader and Electronic Mail User Agent implemented
as a part of Emacs. It's been around in some form for over 6 years
now, and has been distributed as a standard part of Emacs for much of
that time. Gnus 5 is the latest (and greatest) incarnation. The
original version was called GNUS, and was written by Masanobu UMEDA.
When autumn crept up in '94, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen grew bored and
decided to rewrite Gnus.
Its biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely customizable. It
is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but most of the complexity
can be ignored until you're ready to take advantage of it. If you
receive a reasonable volume of e-mail (you're on various mailing
lists), or you would like to read high-volume mailing lists but cannot
keep up with them, then you definitely want to investigate Gnus for
reading mail.
This FAQ is maintained by Justin Sheehy. I would like to thank Steve
Baur and Per Abrahamsen for doing a wonderful job with this FAQ before
me.
If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at:
or anonymous FTP at
.
Patches are available at , , or writes:
[For Microsoft Windows NT] Be sure to grab the nttcp.exe file needed
to perform the winsock communication and configure emacs to use it
instead of the default tcp. You will also need to put
(setq tcp-program-name "nttcp")
in your _emacs file.
Jack Vinson writes:
Actually, any TCP program will work. I have tcp.exe from the people
who are doing win32 ports of Gnu software. I found it at
. Be
warned that this is a large (7mb) archive of all sorts of stuff,
including (for some reason) all the e-lisp files you will ever want. I
just downloaded it and extracted the functions I wanted.
Ron Forrester writes:
With the release of GNU Emacs 19.31, Microsoft Windows '95 & NT users
no longer need nttcp.exe as Emacs now has open-network-stream built
in.
------------------------------
Subject: Q1.6 How do I unsubscribe from the Mailing List?
Send an e-mail message to with the
magic word unsubscribe somewhere in it, and you will be removed.
------------------------------
Subject: Q1.7 How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?
You don't. Gnus is distributed with both emacsen, use the version of
Gnus that comes with your emacs.
------------------------------
Subject: Q1.8 What resources are available?
There is the newsgroup Gnu.emacs.gnus. Discussion of Gnus 5.x is now
taking place there. There is also a mailing list, send mail to
ding-request@gnus.org with the magic word subscribe somewhere in it.
NOTE: the traffic on this list is heavy so you may not want to be on
it (unless you use Gnus as your mailer reader, that is). The mailing
list is mainly for developers and testers.
Jason L Tibbitts III writes:
Archives of the Ding mailing list are easily accessible by using
gnus-group-make-archive-group, by default bound to G a in the Group
buffer. This presents you with a group containing the 500 most recent
articles from the mailing list. When called with a prefix argument, as
in C-u G a, the entire (rather huge) archive is fetched. The archives
are made available via FTP by Jason Tibbitts (tibbs@uh.edu); complain
to him about problems with access. The magic of accessing the archives
is provided by Gnus.
This mailing list is mirrored on the World Wide Web at
.
Gnus has a home World Wide Web page at
.
Gnus has a write up in the comp.windows.x.apps FAQ at:
.
The Gnus manual is also available on the World Wide Web. To find the
mirror closest to you, go to:
.
PostScript copies of the Gnus Reference card are available from
.
PostScript:
HOWTOs, Tips & Tricks forums, Sample Configurations, Screenshot
Galleries and tons of angry fruitsalad can be found at
writes :
I wonder if you're hitting the infamous libresolv problem. The basic
problem is that under SunOS you can compile either with DNS or NIS
name lookup libraries but not both. Try substituting the IP address
and see if that works; if so, you need to download the sources and
recompile.
------------------------------
Subject: Q1.10 Mailcrypt 3.4 doesn't work
You are attempting to use the mailcrypt 3.4 distribution with Gnus
5.3. Mailcrypt 3.4 needs some minor patches to work with Gnus 5.[23],
that are present in the version of mailcrypt distributed with XEmacs
19.14 or later.
------------------------------
Subject: Q1.11 What other packages work with Gnus?
Mailcrypt
Mailcrypt is an Emacs interface to PGP, written by Patrick LoPresti
and Jin Choi . It works, it installs
without hassle, and integrates very easily. Mailcrypt can be obtained
from
.
Tools for Mime
Tools for Mime is an Emacs MUA interface to MIME written by MORIOKA
Tomohiko , and KOBAYASHI Shuhei
.
Note:Do not use TM with Gnus 5.8.x or later. These versions of Gnus
have native MIME support and should not try to use an external MIME
library.
It can be obtained from
as his PhD thesis. It is now
distributed as a standard part of Gnus. A copy for Gnus 5 can be
obtained at:
of Netscape fame. Jamie has recently given
his blessing to a new version whose primary maintainer is Ronan Waide
. This version is the result of the fork that was
maintained by Matt Simmons for some time. The new home of BBDB is
writes :
I posted the same query recently and I got an answer to it. I am going
to repeat the answer. What you need is a newer version of gnus,
version 5.0.4+. I am using 5.0.12 and it works fine with me with the
following settings:
(setq gnus-check-new-newsgroups nil
gnus-read-active-file 'some
gnus-nov-is-evil nil
gnus-select-method '(nntp gnus-nntp-server))
Francesco Potort́ writes :
I would rather write: 'ask-server [for the value of
gnus-check-new-newsgroups] instead of nil. It is more useful to most
people, and does not increase the load time too much.
------------------------------
Subject: Q1.13 I've upgraded to 5.2 (or greater) and my hooks no longer work
Gnus now uses a combined mode for editing mail and news posts called
message-mode. All your hooks must change to reflect this. You can
either use gnus-setup.el provided with Gnus 5.2 (please see Q2.12 for
details), or you can make the changes by hand.
In particular, mail-mode, news-reply-mode, and news-mode have all been
replaced with message-mode.
------------------------------
Subject: Q1.14 How do I specify the NNTP server?
There are a variety of ways, all documented in the Gnus user's manual.
1. (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.somewhere.edu"))
2. (setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))
3. If gnus-select-method is not set, Gnus will take a look at the
NNTPSERVER environment variable. If that variable isn't set, Gnus
will see whether gnus-nntpserver-file (/etc/nntpserver by default)
has any opinions on the matter. If that fails as well, Gnus will
try to use the machine that is running Emacs as an NNTP server.
4. If gnus-nntp-server is set, this variable will override
gnus-select-method. You should therefore set gnus-nntp-server to
nil, which is what it is by default.
5. You can also make Gnus prompt you interactively for the name of an
NNTP server. If you give a non-numerical prefix to gnus (i.e., C-u
M-x gnus), Gnus will let you choose between the servers in the
gnus-secondary-servers list (if any).
------------------------------
Subject: Q1.15 What is the difference between persistent and unexpirable
messages?
Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen writes: The terms are not
synonymous, they are orthogonal.
If you tap * on an article, you have made it persistent. Nothing you
ever do, except using the M-* command, will remove it from the cache
where it's stored.
If you mark an article with the E mark, (ie., made it expirable), it
will be deleted by the mail backend when it reaches a certain age. The
persistent copy of the message will not be touched.
The two terms are not related.
------------------------------
Subject: Q1.16 Does Gnus have MIME support?
Gnus 5.8.x has native fully-integrated MIME support.
If you are using an earlier version of Gnus, there are some other
packages that you can use with Gnus. A link to Tools for MIME can be
found in the other packages question.
Note: TM will not work in any version of Gnus that has native MIME
support.
------------------------------
2. Customizing Gnus
------------------------------
Subject: Q2.2 How do I quote messages?
I see lots of messages with quoted material in them. I am wondering
how to have Gnus do it for me.
This is Gnus, so there are a number of ways of doing this. You can use
the built-in commands to do this. There are the ``F'' and ``R'' keys
from the summary buffer which automatically include the article being
responded to. These commands are also selectable as Followup and Yank
and Reply and Yank in the Post menu.
C-c C-y grabs the previous message and prefixes each line with
`message-indentation-spaces' spaces or `message-yank-prefix' if that
is non-nil, unless you have set your own `message-cite-function',
which will be called to do the job.
You might also consider the Supercite package, which allows for pretty
arbitrarily complex quoting styles. Some people love it, some people
hate it.
If you decide to use Supercite, you need to modify more than just
`mail-citation-hook'. You need something similar to the following:
(autoload 'sc-cite-original "supercite" "Supercite 3.1" t)
(setq message-cite-function 'sc-cite-original)
------------------------------
Subject: Q2.4 Any good suggestions on stuff for an all.SCORE file?
Here is a collection of suggestions from various sources:
From "Dave Disser"
I like blasting anything without lowercase letters. Weeds out most of
the make $$ fast, as well as the lame titles like "IBM" and "HP-UX"
with no further description.
(("Subject"
("^\\(Re: \\)?[^a-z]*$" -200 nil R)))
From "Peter Arius"
The most vital entries in my (still young) all.SCORE:
(("xref"
("alt.fan.oj-simpson" -1000 nil s))
("subject"
("\\<\\(make\\|fast\\|big\\)\\s-*\\(money\\|cash\\|bucks?\\)\\>" -1000 nil r)
("$$$$" -1000 nil s)))
From "Per Abrahamsen"
(("subject"
;; CAPS OF THE WORLD, UNITE
("^..[^a-z]+$" -1 nil R)
;; $$$ Make Money $$$ (Try work)
("$" -1 nil s)
;; I'm important! And I have exclamation marks to prove it!
("!" -1 nil s)))
From "heddy boubaker"
I would like to contribute with mine.
(
(read-only t)
("subject"
;; ALL CAPS SUBJECTS
("^\\([Rr][Ee]: +\\)?[^a-z]+$" -1 nil R)
;; $$$ Make Money $$$
("$$" -10 nil s)
;; Empty subjects are worthless!
("^ *\\([(<]none[>)]\\|(no subject\\( given\\)?)\\)? *$" -10 nil r)
;; Sometimes interesting announces occur!
("ANN?OU?NC\\(E\\|ING\\)" +10 nil r)
;; Some people think they're on mailing lists
("\\(un\\)?sub?scribe" -100 nil r)
;; Stop Micro$oft NOW!!
("\\(m\\(icro\\)?[s$]\\(oft\\|lot\\)?-?\\)?wind?\\(ows\\|aube\\|oze\\)?[- ]*\
\('?95\\|NT\\|3[.]1\\|32\\)" -1001 nil r)
;; I've nothing to buy
("\\(for\\|4\\)[- ]*sale" -100 nil r)
;; SELF-DISCIPLINED people
("\\[[^a-z0-9 \t\n][^a-z0-9 \t\n]\\]" +100 nil r)
)
("from"
;; To keep track of posters from my site
(".dgac.fr" +1000 nil s))
("followup"
;; Keep track of answers to my posts
("boubaker" +1000 nil s))
("lines"
;; Some people have really nothing to say!!
(1 -10 nil <=))
(mark -100)
(expunge -1000)
)
From "Christopher Jones"
The sample all.SCORE files from Per and boubaker could be augmented
with:
(("subject"
;; No junk mail please!
("please ignore" -500 nil s)
("test" -500 nil e))
)
From "Brian Edmonds"
Augment any of the above with a fast method of scoring down
excessively cross posted articles.
("xref"
;; the more cross posting, the exponentially worse the article
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -1 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -2 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -4 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -8 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -16 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -32 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -64 nil
r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -
128 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\
S-+" -256 nil r)
("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\
S-+ \\S-+" -512 nil r))
Or see
which also includes pointers to my SMEGHEADS and BLACKLIST files.
From "Hardrock"
(Original source unknown, this is used by permission from the Grubor
FAQ 2.21).
("from"
("Law Doctor" -10000 nil s)
("Manus" -10000 nil s)
("Grubor" -10000 nil s)
("DrG" -10000 nil s))
From "d. hall"
Here's an example of using the orphan scoring rule to make reading of
large newsgroups more pleasant, in this case comp.lang.c.
(("subject"
("windows" -100)
("dos" -100))
(orphan -200)
(mark-and-expunge -100))
------------------------------
Subject: Q2.6 I don't like the default WWW browser
Now when choosing an URL Gnus starts up a W3 buffer, I would like it
to always use Netscape (I don't browse in text-mode ;-).
You should set your browse-url-browser-function:
(setq browse-url-browser-function 'browse-url-netscape)
------------------------------
Subject: Q2.9 How can I make favorite authors be highlighted in the Summary
buffer?
Per Abrahamsen writes:
Just increase their score, and they will be highlighted.
You can increase the score of all articles written by Larry Wall in
comp.lang.perl by entering the group, find an article written by Larry
Wall, and type I A (Increase Author) or even better I a s p (Increase
author by substring permanently). You will be prompted with the
content of the From header for the current article, so you can edit
trim string down to just Larry Wall if you want.
------------------------------
Subject: Q2.10 How do I get multiple .signature files?
Kai Grossjohann writes:
(defun my-signature ()
(cond ((string-match "ding" gnus-newsgroup-name)
"Signature for Ding")
((string-match "^nnml:" gnus-newsgroup-name)
"Signature for mail groups")
(t
"Default signature")))
(setq message-signature 'my-signature)
You get the idea ...
Jack Vinson writes:
For multiple signature files, I advise the message-insert-signature
function to set message-signature-file to a random file from my
signature directory: (I have files that look like sig1 sig2 etc in
that directory).
;; random insertion of .signature file
;; Thanks to Glenn R Coombs: glenn@prl.philips.co.uk
(defvar grc-signature-dir "~/.sig/")
(defvar grc-signature-base "sig")
(defadvice message-insert-signature (before random-mail-sig-ag act comp)
"Change the value of message-signature-file each time
`message-insert-signature' is called."
(let ((files (file-name-all-completions
grc-signature-base (expand-file-name grc-signature-dir))))
(if files (let ((file (nth (random (length files)) files)))
(setq message-signature-file (concat grc-signature-dir file))
))))
Ralph Schleicher writes:
Here's a version which will add a fortune cookie to your .signature.
(setq message-signature 'fortune)
(defvar fortune-program nil
"*Program used to generate epigrams, default \"fortune\".")
(defvar fortune-switches nil
"*List of extra arguments when `fortune-program' is invoked.")
(defun fortune (&optional long-p)
"Generate a random epigram.
An optional prefix argument generates a long epigram.
The epigram is inserted at point if called interactively."
(interactive "*P")
(let ((fortune-buffer (generate-new-buffer " fortune"))
(fortune-string "Have an adequate day."))
(unwind-protect
(save-excursion
(set-buffer fortune-buffer)
(apply 'call-process
(append (list (or fortune-program "fortune") nil t nil)
fortune-switches (list (if long-p "-l" "-s"))))
(skip-chars-backward "\n\t ")
(setq fortune-string (buffer-substring (point-min) (point))))
(kill-buffer fortune-buffer))
(if (interactive-p)
(insert fortune-string))
fortune-string))
Bjorn Borud offers:
(setq message-borud-newsgroup-signature
'(
("^no\\.test$" . "~/.no.test-signatur")
("^no\\.irc$" . "~/.no.irc-signature")
("^no\\.general" . "~/.no.general-signature")
("^no\\.alt\\.frust" . "~/.no.alt.frustrasjoner-signature")
("^no\\.alt\\." . "~/.no.alt-signature")
("www" . "~/.www-signature")
("^no\\." . "~/.no-signature")
("^alt\\.irc" . "~/.alt.irc-signature")
("^alt\\." . "~/.alt-signature")
("^comp\\." . "~/.comp-signature")))
(setq message-borud-default-signature (expand-file-name "~/.signature"))
(defun message-borud-signature (group)
"Find the signature file that applies to the newsgroup
specified by GROUP. If this file is not found return the
value of message-borud-default-signature"
(let ((tmp message-borud-newsgroup-signature))
(while (and tmp (not (string-match (caar tmp) group)))
(setq tmp (cdr tmp)))
(if tmp
(cdar tmp)
message-borud-default-signature)))
;;; Standard stuff
(setq message-signature
(lambda ()
(progn
(let
((sigfile (message-borud-signature gnus-newsgroup-name)))
(if (file-exists-p sigfile)
(save-excursion
(progn
(goto-char (point-max))
(insert "\n\n-- \n")
(insert-file-contents sigfile)
(goto-char (point-min)))))))))
------------------------------
Subject: Q2.11 Gnus and compression hooks
Richard Pieri writes:
I just stumbled into a nasty gotcha, a conflict between Gnus (probably
any version) and any on-the-fly file compression hooks. This morning,
the code that pulls the system mailbox into a local Incoming file
created a file called Incominga003.Z. The problem should be apparent:
the .Z extension gets the file flagged as compressed, so the
compression code tries to decompress it; since it is not compressed,
this fails.
The solution: do not allow periods in the pseudo-random Incoming file
names.
Editor's note: Similar behavior has been observed with jka-compr as
well.
This problem has been fixed in Gnus 5.4.
------------------------------
Subject: Q2.12 Using Gnus and Other Packages
Kevin J Hilman writes:
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