Frequently Asked Questions
==========================

This is the Gnus Frequently Asked Questions list. If you have a Web browser, the official hypertext version is at http://www.miranova.com/~steve/gnus-faq.html>, and has probably been updated since you got this manual.

Installation
------------

  * Q1.1  What is the latest version of Gnus?

     The latest (and greatest) version is 5.0.10.  You might also run across something called September Gnus.  September Gnus is the alpha version of the next major release of Gnus.  It is currently not stable enough to run unless you are prepared to debug lisp.

  * Q1.2  Where do I get Gnus?

     Any of the following locations:

       - ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/emacs/gnus/gnus.tar.gz

       - ftp://ftp.pilgrim.umass.edu/pub/misc/ding/

       - gopher://gopher.pilgrim.umass.edu/11/pub/misc/ding/

       - ftp://aphrodite.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/pub/ding-gnus/

       - ftp://ftp.solace.mh.se:/pub/gnu/elisp/

  * Q1.3  Which version of Emacs do I need?

     At least GNU Emacs 19.28, or XEmacs 19.12 is recommended.  GNU Emacs 19.25 has been reported to work under certain circumstances, but it doesn't officially work on it.  19.27 has also been reported to work.  Gnus has been reported to work under OS/2 as well as Unix.

  * Q1.4  Where is timezone.el?

     Upgrade to XEmacs 19.13.  In earlier versions of XEmacs this file was placed with Gnus 4.1.3, but that has been corrected.

  * Q1.5  When I run Gnus on XEmacs 19.13 I get weird error messages.

     You're running an old version of Gnus.  Upgrade to at least version 5.0.4.

  * Q1.6  How do I unsubscribe from the Mailing List?

     Send an e-mail message to ding-request@ifi.uio.no with the magic word unsubscribe somewhere in it, and you will be removed.

     If you are reading the digest version of the list, send an e-mail message to

     ding-rn-digests-d-request@moe.shore.net with unsubscribe as the subject and you will be removed.

  * Q1.7  How do I run Gnus on both Emacs and XEmacs?

     The basic answer is to byte-compile under XEmacs, and then you can run under either Emacsen.  There is, however, a potential version problem with easymenu.el with Gnu Emacs prior to 19.29.

     Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes :

     The internal easymenu.el interface changed between 19.28 and 19.29 in order to make it possible to create byte compiled files that can be shared between Gnu Emacs and XEmacs.  The change is upward compatible, but not downward compatible. This gives the following compatibility table:

          Compiled with:  | Can be used with:
          ----------------+--------------------------------------
          19.28           | 19.28         19.29
          19.29           |               19.29           XEmacs
          XEmacs          |               19.29           XEmacs

     If you have Gnu Emacs 19.28 or earlier, or XEmacs 19.12 or earlier, get a recent version of auc-menu.el from ftp://ftp.iesd.auc.dk/pub/emacs-lisp/auc-menu.el, and install it under the name easymenu.el somewhere early in your load path.

  * 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@ifi.uio.no 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.

     Gnus has a home World Wide Web page at

     http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/ding.html.

     Gnus has a write up in the X Windows Applications FAQ at

     http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/xapps/Q-III.html.

     The Gnus manual is also available on the World Wide Web. The canonical source is in Norway at

     http://www.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/ding-manual/gnus_toc.html.

     There are three mirrors in the United States:

      1. http://www.miranova.com/gnus-man/

      2. http://www.pilgrim.umass.edu/pub/misc/ding/manual/gnus_toc.html

      3. http://www.rtd.com/~woo/gnus/

     PostScript copies of the Gnus Reference card are available from

     ftp://ftp.cs.ualberta.ca/pub/oolog/gnus/.  They are mirrored at

     ftp://ftp.pilgrim.umass.edu/pub/misc/ding/refcard/ in the United States. And

     ftp://marvin.fkphy.uni-duesseldorf.de/pub/gnus/ in Germany.

     An online version of the Gnus FAQ is available at

     http://www.miranova.com/~steve/gnus-faq.html. Off-line formats are also available:

     ASCII: ftp://ftp.miranova.com/pub/gnus/gnus-faq

     PostScript: ftp://ftp.miranova.com/pub/gnus/gnus-faq.ps.

  * Q1.9  Gnus hangs on connecting to NNTP server

     I am running XEmacs on SunOS and Gnus prints a message about Connecting to NNTP server and then just hangs.

     Ben Wing <wing@netcom.com> 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.

  * Q1.10  Mailcrypt 3.4 doesn't work

     This problem is verified to still exist in Gnus 5.0.9 and MailCrypt 3.4. The answer comes from Peter Arius <arius@immd2.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>.

     I found out that mailcrypt uses gnus-eval-in-buffer-window, which is a macro. It seems as if you have compiled mailcrypt with plain old GNUS in load path, and the XEmacs byte compiler has inserted that macro definition into mc-toplev.elc. The solution is to recompile mc-toplev.el with Gnus 5 in load-path, and it works fine.

     Steve Baur <steve@miranova.com> adds :

     The problem also manifests itself if neither GNUS 4 nor Gnus 5 is in the load-path.

  * Q1.11  What other packages work with Gnus?

       - Mailcrypt.

          Mailcrypt is an Emacs interface to PGP.  It works, it installs without hassle, and integrates very easily.  Mailcrypt can be obtained from

          ftp://cag.lcs.mit.edu/pub/patl/mailcrypt-3.4.tar.gz.

       - Tiny Mime.

          Tiny Mime is an Emacs MUA interface to MIME.  Installation is a two-step process unlike most other packages, so you should be prepared to move the byte-compiled code somewhere.  There are currently two versions of this package available.  It can be obtained from

          ftp://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/GNU/elisp/. Be sure to apply the supplied patch.  It works with Gnus through version 5.0.9.  In order for all dependencies to work correctly the load sequence is as follows:

                 (load "tm-setup")
                 (load "gnus")
                 (load "mime-compose")

          NOTE: Loading the package disables citation highlighting by default.  To get the old behavior back, use the M-t command.

Customization
-------------

  * Q2.1  Custom Edit does not work under XEmacs

     The custom package has not been ported to XEmacs.

  * 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 ail-indentation-spaces spaces or mail-yank-prefix if that is non-nil, unless you have set your own mail-citation-hook, 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.

  * Q2.3 How can I keep my nnvirtual:* groups sorted?

     How can I most efficiently arrange matters so as to keep my nnvirtual:* (etc) groups at the top of my group selection buffer, whilst keeping everything sorted in alphabetical order.

     If you don't subscribe often to new groups then the easiest way is to first sort the groups and then manually kill and yank the virtuals wherever you want them.

  * Q2.4  Any good suggestions on stuff for an all.SCORE file?

     Here is a collection of suggestions from the Gnus mailing list.

      1. From ``Dave Disser'' <disser@sdd.hp.com>

          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)))

      2. From ``Peter Arius'' <arius@immd2.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

          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)))

      3. From ``Per Abrahamsen'' <abraham@dina.kvl.dk>

               (("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)))

      4. From ``heddy boubaker'' <boubaker@cenatls.cena.dgac.fr>

          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)
                )

      5. From ``Christopher Jones'' <cjones@au.oracle.com>

          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))
               	)

      6. From ``Brian Edmonds'' <edmonds@cs.ubc.ca>

          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))

  * Q2.5  What do I use to yank-through when replying?

     You should probably reply and followup with R and F, instead of r and f, which solves your problem.  But you could try something like:

          (defconst mail-yank-ignored-headers
            "^.*:"
            "Delete these headers from old message when it's inserted in a reply.")

  * 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 ;-).

      1. Activate `Customize...' from the `Help' menu.

      2. Scroll down to the `WWW Browser' field.

      3. Click `mouse-2' on `WWW Browser'.

      4. Select `Netscape' from the pop up menu.

      5. Press `C-c C-c'

     If you are using XEmacs then to specify Netscape do

            (setq gnus-button-url 'gnus-netscape-open-url)

  * Q2.7 What, if any, relation is between ``ask-server'' and ``(setq gnus-read-active-file 'some)''?

     In order for Gnus to show you the complete list of newsgroups, it will either have to either store the list locally, or ask the server to transmit the list. You enable the first with

                  (setq gnus-save-killed-list t)

     and the second with

                  (setq gnus-read-active-file t)

     If both are disabled, Gnus will not know what newsgroups exists. There is no option to get the list by casting a spell.

  * Q2.8  Moving between groups is slow.

     Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

     Do you call define-key or something like that in one of the summary mode hooks?  This would force Emacs to recalculate the keyboard shortcuts.  Removing the call should speed up M-x gnus-summary-mode RET by a couple of orders of magnitude.  You can use

          (define-key gnus-summary-mode-map KEY COMMAND)

     in your .gnus instead.

Reading News
------------

  * Q3.1  How do I convert my kill files to score files?

     A kill-to-score translator was written by Ethan Bradford <ethanb@ptolemy.astro.washington.edu>.  It is available from

     http://baugi.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/ding-various/gnus-kill-to-score.el.

  * Q3.2 My news server has a lot of groups, and killing groups is painfully slow.

     Don't do that then.  The best way to get rid of groups that should be dead is to edit your newsrc directly.  This problem will be addressed in the near future.

  * Q3.3  How do I use an NNTP server with authentication?

     Put the following into your .gnus:

           (add-hook 'nntp-server-opened-hook 'nntp-send-authinfo)

  * Q3.4  Not reading the first article.

     How do I avoid reading the first article when a group is selected?

      1. Use RET to select the group instead of SPC.

      2. (setq gnus-auto-select first nil)

      3. Luis Fernandes <elf@mailhost.ee.ryerson.ca>writes:

          This is what I use...customize as necessary...

               ;;; Don't auto-select first article if reading sources, or archives or
               ;;; jobs postings, etc. and just display the summary buffer
               (add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook
               	  (function
               	   (lambda ()
               	     (cond ((string-match "sources" gnus-newsgroup-name)
               		    (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil))
               			   ((string-match "jobs" gnus-newsgroup-name)
               				(setq gnus-auto-select-first nil))
               		   ((string-match "comp\\.archives" gnus-newsgroup-name)
               		    (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil))
               		   ((string-match "reviews" gnus-newsgroup-name)
               		    (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil))
               		   ((string-match "announce" gnus-newsgroup-name)
               		    (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil))
               		   ((string-match "binaries" gnus-newsgroup-name)
               		    (setq gnus-auto-select-first nil))
               		   (t
               		    (setq gnus-auto-select-first t))))))

      4. Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

          Another possibility is to create an all.binaries.all.SCORE file like this:

               ((local
                 (gnus-auto-select-first nil)))

          and insert

               	(setq gnus-auto-select-first t)

          in your .gnus.

  * Q3.5  Why aren't BBDB known posters marked in the summary buffer?

     Brian Edmonds <edmonds@cs.ubc.ca> writes:

     Due to changes in Gnus 5.0, bbdb-gnus.el no longer marks known posters in the summary buffer.  An updated version, gnus-bbdb.el is available at the locations listed below.  This package also supports autofiling of incoming mail to folders specified in the BBDB.  Extensive instructions are included as comments in the file.

     Send mail to majordomo@edmonds.home.cs.ubc.ca with the following line in the body of the message: get misc gnus-bbdb.el.

     Or get it from the World Wide Web:

     http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/edmonds/gnus-bbdb.el.

Reading Mail
------------

  * Q4.1 What does the message ``Buffer has changed on disk'' mean in a mail group?

     Your filter program should not deliver mail directly to your folders, instead it should put the mail into spool files.  Gnus will then move the mail safely from the spool files into the folders.  This will eliminate the problem.  Look it up in the manual, in the section entitled ``Mail & Procmail''.

  * Q4.2  How do you make articles un-expirable?

     I am using nnml to read news and have used gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups to automagically expire articles in some groups (Gnus being one of them).  Sometimes there are interesting articles in these groups that I want to keep.  Is there any way of explicitly marking an article as un-expirable - that is mark it as read but not expirable?

     Use u, !, d or M-u in the summary buffer. You just remove the E mark by setting some other mark. It's not necessary to tick the articles.

  * Q4.3  How do I delete bogus nnml: groups?

     My problem is that I have various mail (nnml) groups generated while experimenting with Gnus. How do I remove them now? Setting the level to 9 does not help. Also gnus-group-check-bogus-groups does not recognize them.

     Removing mail groups is tricky at the moment. (It's on the to-do list, though.) You basically have to kill the groups in Gnus, shut down Gnus, edit the active file to exclude these groups, and probably remove the nnml directories that contained these groups as well. Then start Gnus back up again.

  * Q4.4  What happened to my new mail groups?

     I got new mail, but I have never seen the groups they should have been placed in.

     They are probably there, but as zombies. Press A z to list zombie groups, and then subscribe to the groups you want with u. This is all documented quite nicely in the user's manual.

  * Q4.5  Not scoring mail groups

     How do you totally turn off scoring in mail groups?

     Use an nnbabyl:all.SCORE (or nnmh, or nnml, or whatever) file containing:

          ((adapt ignore)
           (local (gnus-use-scoring nil))
           (exclude-files "all.SCORE"))