Many functions, among them functions for moving, decoding and saving articles, use what is known as the Process/Prefix convention.
This is a method for figuring out what articles that the user wants the command to be performed on.
It goes like this:
If the numeric prefix is N, perform the operation on the next N articles, starting with the current one. If the numeric prefix is negative, perform the operation on the previous N articles, starting with the current one.
If transient-mark-mode
in non-nil
and the region is
active, all articles in the region will be worked upon.
If there is no numeric prefix, but some articles are marked with the process mark, perform the operation on the articles that are marked with the process mark.
If there is neither a numeric prefix nor any articles marked with the process mark, just perform the operation on the current article.
Quite simple, really, but it needs to be made clear so that surprises are avoided.
One thing that seems to shock & horrify lots of people is that, for
instance, 3 d does exactly the same as d d d.
Since each d (which marks the current article as read) by default
goes to the next unread article after marking, this means that 3 d
will mark the next three unread articles as read, no matter what the
summary buffer looks like. Set gnus-summary-goto-unread
to
nil
for a more straightforward action.
gnus-novice-user
nil
, you are either a newcomer to the
World of Usenet, or you are very cautious, which is a nice thing to be,
really. You will be given questions of the type "Are you sure you want
to do this?" before doing anything dangerous. This is t
by
default.
gnus-expert-user
nil
, you will never ever be asked any
questions by Gnus. It will simply assume you know what you're doing, no
matter how strange.
gnus-interactive-catchup
nil
. It
is t
by default.
gnus-interactive-exit
t
by
default.
Throughout this manual you've probably noticed lots of variables that
are called things like gnus-group-line-format
and
gnus-summary-mode-line-format
. These control how Gnus is to
output lines in the various buffers. There's quite a lot of them.
Fortunately, they all use the same syntax, so there's not that much to
be annoyed by.
Here's an example format spec (from the group buffer): `%M%S%5y: %(%g%)\n'. We see that it is indeed extremely ugly, and that there are lots of percentages everywhere.
Each `%' element will be replaced by some string or other when the buffer in question is generated. `%5y' means "insert the `y' spec, and pad with spaces to get a 5-character field". Just like a normal format spec, almost.
You can also say `%6,4y', which means that the field will never be more than 6 characters wide and never less than 4 characters wide.
There are also specs for highlighting, and these are shared by all the
format variables. Text inside the `%(' and `%)' specifiers
will get the special mouse-face
property set, which means that it
will be highlighted (with gnus-mouse-face
) when you put the mouse
pointer over it.
Text inside the `%[' and `%]' specifiers will have their
normal faces set using gnus-face-0
, which is bold
by
default. If you say `%1[' instead, you'll get gnus-face-1
instead, and so on. Create as many faces as you wish. The same goes
for the mouse-face
specs--you can say `%3(hello%)' to have
`hello' mouse-highlighted with gnus-mouse-face-3
.
Here's an alternative recipe for the group buffer:
;; Create three face types. (setq gnus-face-1 'bold) (setq gnus-face-3 'italic) ;; We want the article count to be in ;; a bold and green face. So we create ;; a new face called `my-green-bold'. (copy-face 'bold 'my-green-bold) ;; Set the color. (set-face-foreground 'my-green-bold "ForestGreen") (setq gnus-face-2 'my-green-bold) ;; Set the new & fancy format. (setq gnus-group-line-format "%M%S%3{%5y%}%2[:%] %(%1{%g%}%)\n")
I'm sure you'll be able to use this scheme to create totally unreadable and extremely vulgar displays. Have fun!
Currently Gnus uses the following formatting variables:
gnus-group-line-format
, gnus-summary-line-format
,
gnus-server-line-format
, gnus-topic-line-format
,
gnus-group-mode-line-format
,
gnus-summary-mode-line-format
,
gnus-article-mode-line-format
,
gnus-server-mode-line-format
.
Note that the `%(' specs (and friends) do not make any sense on the mode-line variables.
All these format variables can also be arbitrary elisp forms. In that
case, they will be eval
ed to insert the required lines.
Gnus includes a command to help you while creating your own format
specs. M-x gnus-update-format will eval
the current form,
update the spec in question and pop you to a buffer where you can
examine the resulting lisp code to be run to generate the line.
No, there's nothing here about X, so be quiet.
If gnus-use-full-window
non-nil
, Gnus will delete all
other windows and occupy the entire Emacs screen by itself. It is
t
by default.
gnus-buffer-configuration
describes how much space each Gnus
buffer should be given. Here's an excerpt of this variable:
((group (vertical 1.0 (group 1.0 point) (if gnus-carpal (group-carpal 4)))) (article (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point) (article 1.0))))
This is an alist. The key is a symbol that names some action or
other. For instance, when displaying the group buffer, the window
configuration function will use group
as the key. A full list of
possible names is listed below.
The value (i. e., the split) says how much space each buffer
should occupy. To take the article
split as an example -
(article (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point) (article 1.0)))
This split says that the summary buffer should occupy 25% of upper
half of the screen, and that it is placed over the article buffer. As
you may have noticed, 100% + 25% is actually 125% (yup, I saw y'all
reaching for that calculator there). However, the special number
1.0
is used to signal that this buffer should soak up all the
rest of the space available after the rest of the buffers have taken
whatever they need. There should be only one buffer with the 1.0
size spec per split.
Point will be put in the buffer that has the optional third element
point
.
Here's a more complicated example:
(article (vertical 1.0 (group 4) (summary 0.25 point) (if gnus-carpal (summary-carpal 4)) (article 1.0)))
If the size spec is an integer instead of a floating point number, then that number will be used to say how many lines a buffer should occupy, not a percentage.
If the split looks like something that can be eval
ed (to be
precise--if the car
of the split is a function or a subr), this
split will be eval
ed. If the result is non-nil
, it will
be used as a split. This means that there will be three buffers if
gnus-carpal
is nil
, and four buffers if gnus-carpal
is non-nil
.
Not complicated enough for you? Well, try this on for size:
(article (horizontal 1.0 (vertical 0.5 (group 1.0) (gnus-carpal 4)) (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point) (summary-carpal 4) (article 1.0))))
Whoops. Two buffers with the mystery 100% tag. And what's that
horizontal
thingie?
If the first element in one of the split is horizontal
, Gnus will
split the window horizontally, giving you two windows side-by-side.
Inside each of these strips you may carry on all you like in the normal
fashion. The number following horizontal
says what percentage of
the screen is to be given to this strip.
For each split, there must be one element that has the 100% tag. The splitting is never accurate, and this buffer will eat any leftover lines from the splits.
To be slightly more formal, here's a definition of what a legal split may look like:
split = frame | horizontal | vertical | buffer | form frame = "(frame " size *split ")" horizontal = "(horizontal " size *split ")" vertical = "(vertical " size *split ")" buffer = "(" buffer-name " " size *[ "point" ] ")" size = number | frame-params buffer-name = group | article | summary ...
The limitations are that the frame
split can only appear as the
top-level split. form should be an Emacs Lisp form that should
return a valid split. We see that each split is fully recursive, and
may contain any number of vertical
and horizontal
splits.
Finding the right sizes can be a bit complicated. No window may be less
than gnus-window-min-height
(default 2) characters high, and all
windows must be at least gnus-window-min-width
(default 1)
characters wide. Gnus will try to enforce this before applying the
splits. If you want to use the normal Emacs window width/height limit,
you can just set these two variables to nil
.
If you're not familiar with Emacs terminology, horizontal
and
vertical
splits may work the opposite way of what you'd expect.
Windows inside a horizontal
split are shown side-by-side, and
windows within a vertical
split are shown above each other.
If you want to experiment with window placement, a good tip is to call
gnus-configure-frame
directly with a split. This is the function
that does all the real work when splitting buffers. Below is a pretty
nonsensical configuration with 5 windows; two for the group buffer and
three for the article buffer. (I said it was nonsensical.) If you
eval
the statement below, you can get an idea of how that would
look straight away, without going through the normal Gnus channels.
Play with it until you're satisfied, and then use
gnus-add-configuration
to add your new creation to the buffer
configuration list.
(gnus-configure-frame '(horizontal 1.0 (vertical 10 (group 1.0) (article 0.3 point)) (vertical 1.0 (article 1.0) (horizontal 4 (group 1.0) (article 10)))))
You might want to have several frames as well. No prob--just use the
frame
split:
(gnus-configure-frame '(frame 1.0 (vertical 1.0 (summary 0.25 point) (article 1.0)) (vertical ((height . 5) (width . 15) (user-position . t) (left . -1) (top . 1)) (picon 1.0))))
This split will result in the familiar summary/article window
configuration in the first (or "main") frame, while a small additional
frame will be created where picons will be shown. As you can see,
instead of the normal 1.0
top-level spec, each additional split
should have a frame parameter alist as the size spec.
See section `Frame Parameters' in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
Here's a list of all possible keys for
gnus-buffer-configuration
:
group
, summary
, article
, server
,
browse
, group-mail
, summary-mail
,
summary-reply
, info
, summary-faq
,
edit-group
, edit-server
, reply
, reply-yank
,
followup
, followup-yank
, edit-score
.
Since the gnus-buffer-configuration
variable is so long and
complicated, there's a function you can use to ease changing the config
of a single setting: gnus-add-configuration
. If, for instance,
you want to change the article
setting, you could say:
(gnus-add-configuration '(article (vertical 1.0 (group 4) (summary .25 point) (article 1.0))))
You'd typically stick these gnus-add-configuration
calls in your
`.gnus' file or in some startup hook -- they should be run after
Gnus has been loaded.
Remember all those line format specification variables?
gnus-summary-line-format
, gnus-group-line-format
, and so
on. Now, Gnus will of course heed whatever these variables are, but,
unfortunately, changing them will mean a quite significant slow-down.
(The default values of these variables have byte-compiled functions
associated with them, while the user-generated versions do not, of
course.)
To help with this, you can run M-x gnus-compile after you've fiddled around with the variables and feel that you're (kind of) satisfied. This will result in the new specs being byte-compiled, and you'll get top speed again.
gnus-updated-mode-lines
says what buffers should keep their mode
lines updated. It is a list of symbols. Supported symbols include
group
, article
, summary
, server
,
browse
, and tree
. If the corresponding symbol is present,
Gnus will keep that mode line updated with information that may be
pertinent. If this variable is nil
, screen refresh may be
quicker.
By default, Gnus displays information on the current article in the mode
lines of the summary and article buffers. The information Gnus wishes
to display (eg. the subject of the article) is often longer than the
mode lines, and therefore have to be cut off at some point. The
gnus-mode-non-string-length
variable says how long the other
elements on the line is (i.e., the non-info part). If you put
additional elements on the mode line (eg. a clock), you should modify
this variable:
(add-hook 'display-time-hook (lambda () (setq gnus-mode-non-string-length (+ 21 (if line-number-mode 5 0) (if column-number-mode 4 0) (length display-time-string)))))
If this variable is nil
(which is the default), the mode line
strings won't be chopped off, and they won't be padded either.
The gnus-visual
variable controls most of the prettifying Gnus
aspects. If nil
, Gnus won't attempt to create menus or use fancy
colors or fonts. This will also inhibit loading the `gnus-vis.el'
file.
This variable can be a list of visual properties that are enabled. The following elements are legal, and are all included by default:
group-highlight
summary-highlight
article-highlight
highlight
group-menu
summary-menu
article-menu
browse-menu
server-menu
score-menu
menu
So if you only want highlighting in the article buffer and menus in all buffers, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-visual '(article-highlight menu))
If you want only highlighting and no menus whatsoever, you'd say:
(setq gnus-visual '(highlight))
If gnus-visual
is t
, highlighting and menus will be used
in all Gnus buffers.
Other general variables that influence the look of all buffers include:
gnus-mouse-face
gnus-visual
is nil
.
gnus-display-type
color
, grayscale
or
mono
. If Gnus guesses this display attribute wrongly, either set
this variable in your `~/.emacs' or set the resource
Emacs.displayType
in your `~/.Xdefaults'.
gnus-background-mode
light
or dark
. If Gnus guesses this
frame attribute wrongly, either set this variable in your `~/.emacs' or
set the resource Emacs.backgroundMode
in your `~/.Xdefaults'.
`gnus-display-type'.
There are hooks associated with the creation of all the different menus:
gnus-article-menu-hook
gnus-group-menu-hook
gnus-summary-menu-hook
gnus-server-menu-hook
gnus-browse-menu-hook
gnus-score-menu-hook
Those new-fangled mouse contraptions is very popular with the young, hep kids who don't want to learn the proper way to do things these days. Why, I remember way back in the summer of '89, when I was using Emacs on a Tops 20 system. Three hundred users on one single machine, and every user was running Simula compilers. Bah!
Right.
Well, you can make Gnus display bufferfuls of buttons you can click to
do anything by setting gnus-carpal
to t
. Pretty simple,
really. Tell the chiropractor I sent you.
gnus-carpal-mode-hook
gnus-carpal-button-face
gnus-carpal-header-face
gnus-carpal-group-buffer-buttons
gnus-carpal-summary-buffer-buttons
gnus-carpal-server-buffer-buttons
gnus-carpal-browse-buffer-buttons
All the buttons
variables are lists. The elements in these list
is either a cons cell where the car contains a text to be displayed and
the cdr contains a function symbol, or a simple string.
Gnus, being larger than any program ever written (allegedly), does lots of strange stuff that you may wish to have done while you're not present. For instance, you may want it to check for new mail once in a while. Or you may want it to close down all connections to all servers when you leave Emacs idle. And stuff like that.
Gnus will let you do stuff like that by defining various handlers. Each handler consists of three elements: A function, a time, and an idle parameter.
Here's an example of a handler that closes connections when Emacs has been idle for thirty minutes:
(gnus-demon-close-connections nil 30)
Here's a handler that scans for PGP headers every hour when Emacs is idle:
(gnus-demon-scan-pgp 60 t)
This time parameter and than idle parameter works together
in a strange, but wonderful fashion. Basically, if idle is
nil
, then the function will be called every time minutes.
If idle is t
, then the function will be called after
time minutes only if Emacs is idle. So if Emacs is never idle,
the function will never be called. But once Emacs goes idle, the
function will be called every time minutes.
If idle is a number and time is a number, the function will be called every time minutes only when Emacs has been idle for idle minutes.
If idle is a number and time is nil
, the function
will be called once every time Emacs has been idle for idle
minutes.
And if time is a string, it should look like `07:31', and the function will then be called once every day somewhere near that time. Modified by the idle parameter, of course.
(When I say "minute" here, I really mean gnus-demon-timestep
seconds. This is 60
by default. If you change that variable,
all the timings in the handlers will be affected.)
To set the whole thing in motion, though, you have to set
gnus-use-demon
to t
.
So, if you want to add a handler, you could put something like this in your `.gnus' file:
(gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-close-connections nil 30)
Some ready-made functions to do this has been created:
gnus-demon-add-nocem
, gnus-demon-add-disconnection
, and
gnus-demon-add-scanmail
. Just put those functions in your
`.gnus' if you want those abilities.
If you add handlers to gnus-demon-handlers
directly, you should
run gnus-demon-init
to make the changes take hold. To cancel all
daemons, you can use the gnus-demon-cancel
function.
Note that adding daemons can be pretty naughty if you overdo it. Adding functions that scan all news and mail from all servers every two seconds is a sure-fire way of getting booted off any respectable system. So behave.
Spamming is posting the same article lots and lots of times. Spamming is bad. Spamming is evil.
Spamming is usually canceled within a day or so by various anti-spamming agencies. These agencies usually also send out NoCeM messages. NoCeM is pronounced "no see-'em", and means what the name implies--these are messages that make the offending articles, like, go away.
What use are these NoCeM messages if the articles are canceled anyway? Some sites do not honor cancel messages and some sites just honor cancels from a select few people. Then you may wish to make use of the NoCeM messages, which are distributed in the `alt.nocem.misc' newsgroup.
Gnus can read and parse the messages in this group automatically, and this will make spam disappear.
There are some variables to customize, of course:
gnus-use-nocem
t
to set the ball rolling. It is nil
by default.
gnus-nocem-groups
("alt.nocem.misc" "news.admin.net-abuse.announce")
.
gnus-nocem-issuers
("Automoose-1"
"clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca;" "jem@xpat.com;" "red@redpoll.mrfs.oh.us
(Richard E. Depew)")
; fine, upstanding citizens all of them.
Known despammers that you can put in this list include:
gnus-nocem-directory
gnus-nocem-expiry-wait
So... You want to slow down your news reader even more! This is a good way to do so. Its also a great way to impress people staring over your shoulder as you read news.
What are Picons? To quote directly from the Picons Web site (`http://www.cs.indiana.edu/picons/ftp/index.html'):
Picons is short for "personal icons". They're small, constrained images used to represent users and domains on the net, organized into databases so that the appropriate image for a given e-mail address can be found. Besides users and domains, there are picon databases for Usenet newsgroups and weather forecasts. The picons are in either monochrome
XBM
format or colorXPM
andGIF
formats.
Please see the above mentioned web site for instructions on obtaining and installing the picons databases, or the following ftp site: `http://www.cs.indiana.edu/picons/ftp/index.html'.
Gnus expects picons to be installed into a location pointed to by
gnus-picons-database
.
To use have Gnus display Picons for you, you must be running XEmacs 19.13 or greater since all other versions of Emacs aren't yet able to display images.
Additionally, you must have xpm
support compiled into XEmacs.
If you want to display faces from X-Face
headers, you must have
the netpbm
utilities installed, or munge the
gnus-picons-convert-x-face
variable to use something else.
To enable displaying picons, simply put the following line in your `~/.gnus' file and start Gnus.
(setq gnus-use-picons t) (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-display-picons t) (add-hook 'gnus-summary-prepare-hook 'gnus-group-display-picons t) (add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-picons-article-display-x-face)
Gnus can display picons for you as you enter and leave groups and articles. It knows how to interact with three sections of the picons database. Namely, it can display the picons newsgroup pictures, author's face picture(s), and the authors domain. To enable this feature, you need to first decide where to display them.
gnus-picons-display-where
picons
by
default (which by default maps to the buffer `*Picons*'). Other
valid places could be article
, summary
, or
`"*scratch*"' for all I care. Just make sure that you've made the
buffer visible using the standard Gnus window configuration routines --
See section Windows Configuration.
Note: If you set gnus-use-picons
to t
, it will set up your
window configuration for you to include the picons
buffer.
Now that you've made that decision, you need to add the following functions to the appropriate hooks so these pictures will get displayed at the right time.
gnus-article-display-picons
gnus-picons-display-where
buffer. Should be added to
the gnus-article-display-hook
.
gnus-group-display-picons
gnus-summary-prepare-hook
or to the
gnus-article-display-hook
if gnus-picons-display-where
is set to article
.
gnus-picons-article-display-x-face
gnus-article-display-hook
.
Note: You must append them to the hook, so make sure to specify 't'
to the append flag of add-hook
:
(add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-display-picons t)
The following variables offer further control over how things are done, where things are located, and other useless stuff you really don't need to worry about.
gnus-picons-database
gnus-picons-news-directory
gnus-picons-user-directories
gnus-picons-database
for user
faces. Defaults to ("local" "users" "usenix" "misc/MISC")
.
gnus-picons-domain-directories
gnus-picons-database
for
domain name faces. Defaults to ("domains")
. Some people may
want to add `unknown' to this list.
gnus-picons-convert-x-face
X-Face
header to an X bitmap
(xbm
). Defaults to (format "{ echo '/* Width=48,
Height=48 */'; uncompface; } | icontopbm | pbmtoxbm > %s"
gnus-picons-x-face-file-name)
gnus-picons-x-face-file-name
X-Face
bitmap in. Defaults
to (format "/tmp/picon-xface.%s.xbm" (user-login-name))
.
gnus-picons-buffer
picons
points to. Defaults to
`*Icon Buffer*'.
gnus-verbose
gnus-verbose-backends
gnus-verbose
, but it applies
to the Gnus backends instead of Gnus proper.
nnheader-max-head-length
4096
) specifies
the absolute max length the backends will try to read before giving up
on finding a separator line between the head and the body. If this
variable is nil
, there is no upper read bound. If it is
t
, the backends won't try to read the articles piece by piece,
but read the entire articles. This makes sense with some versions of
ange-ftp
.
nnheader-file-name-translation-alist
(setq nnheader-file-name-translation-alist '((?: . ?_)))In fact, this is the default value for this variable on OS/2 and MS Windows (phooey) systems.
gnus-hidden-properties
(invisible t intangible t)
by default on most systems, which
makes invisible text invisible and intangible.
gnus-parse-headers-hook
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