The Gnus Newsreader

Table of Contents

• 1 Don’t Panic

• 2 Starting Gnus

  • 2.1 Finding the News

  • 2.2 The Server is Down

  • 2.3 Child Gnusae

  • 2.4 New Groups

    • 2.4.1 Checking New Groups
    • 2.4.2 Subscription Methods
    • 2.4.3 Filtering New Groups

  • 2.5 Changing Servers

  • 2.6 Startup Files

  • 2.7 Auto Save

  • 2.8 The Active File

  • 2.9 Startup Variables

• 3 Group Buffer

  • 3.1 Group Buffer Format

    • 3.1.1 Group Line Specification
    • 3.1.2 Group Mode Line Specification
    • 3.1.3 Group Highlighting

  • 3.2 Group Maneuvering

  • 3.3 Selecting a Group

  • 3.4 Subscription Commands

  • 3.5 Group Data

  • 3.6 Group Levels

  • 3.7 Group Score

  • 3.8 Marking Groups

  • 3.9 Foreign Groups

  • 3.10 Group Parameters

  • 3.11 Listing Groups

  • 3.12 Sorting Groups

  • 3.13 Group Maintenance

  • 3.14 Browse Foreign Server

  • 3.15 Exiting Gnus

  • 3.16 Group Topics

    • 3.16.1 Topic Commands
    • 3.16.2 Topic Variables
    • 3.16.3 Topic Sorting
    • 3.16.4 Topic Topology
    • 3.16.5 Topic Parameters

  • 3.17 Accessing groups of non-English names

  • 3.18 Misc Group Stuff

    • 3.18.1 Scanning New Messages
    • 3.18.2 Group Information
    • 3.18.3 Group Timestamp
    • 3.18.4 File Commands
    • 3.18.5 Sieve Commands

• 4 Summary Buffer

  • 4.1 Summary Buffer Format

    • 4.1.1 Summary Buffer Lines
    • 4.1.2 To From Newsgroups
    • 4.1.3 Summary Buffer Mode Line
    • 4.1.4 Summary Highlighting

  • 4.2 Summary Maneuvering

  • 4.3 Choosing Articles

    • 4.3.1 Choosing Commands
    • 4.3.2 Choosing Variables

  • 4.4 Scrolling the Article

  • 4.5 Reply, Followup and Post

    • 4.5.1 Summary Mail Commands
    • 4.5.2 Summary Post Commands
    • 4.5.3 Summary Message Commands
    • 4.5.4 Canceling Articles

  • 4.6 Delayed Articles

  • 4.7 Marking Articles

    • 4.7.1 Unread Articles
    • 4.7.2 Read Articles
    • 4.7.3 Other Marks
    • 4.7.4 Setting Marks
    • 4.7.5 Generic Marking Commands
    • 4.7.6 Setting Process Marks

  • 4.8 Limiting

  • 4.9 Threading

    • 4.9.1 Customizing Threading

      • 4.9.1.1 Loose Threads
      • 4.9.1.2 Filling In Threads
      • 4.9.1.3 More Threading
      • 4.9.1.4 Low-Level Threading

    • 4.9.2 Thread Commands

  • 4.10 Sorting the Summary Buffer

  • 4.11 Asynchronous Article Fetching

  • 4.12 Article Caching

  • 4.13 Persistent Articles

  • 4.14 Sticky Articles

  • 4.15 Article Backlog

  • 4.16 Saving Articles

  • 4.17 Decoding Articles

    • 4.17.1 Uuencoded Articles

    • 4.17.2 Shell Archives

    • 4.17.3 PostScript Files

    • 4.17.4 Other Files

    • 4.17.5 Decoding Variables

      • 4.17.5.1 Rule Variables
      • 4.17.5.2 Other Decode Variables
      • 4.17.5.3 Uuencoding and Posting

    • 4.17.6 Viewing Files

  • 4.18 Article Treatment

    • 4.18.1 Article Highlighting
    • 4.18.2 Article Fontifying
    • 4.18.3 Article Hiding
    • 4.18.4 Article Washing
    • 4.18.5 Article Header
    • 4.18.6 Article Buttons
      • 4.18.6.1 Related variables and functions
    • 4.18.7 Article button levels
    • 4.18.8 Article Date
    • 4.18.9 Article Display
    • 4.18.10 Article Signature
    • 4.18.11 Article Miscellanea

  • 4.19 MIME Commands

  • 4.20 Charsets

  • 4.21 Article Commands

  • 4.22 Summary Sorting

  • 4.23 Finding the Parent

  • 4.24 Alternative Approaches

    • 4.24.1 Pick and Read
    • 4.24.2 Binary Groups

  • 4.25 Tree Display

  • 4.26 Mail Group Commands

  • 4.27 Various Summary Stuff

    • 4.27.1 Summary Group Information
    • 4.27.2 Searching for Articles
    • 4.27.3 Summary Generation Commands
    • 4.27.4 Really Various Summary Commands

  • 4.28 Exiting the Summary Buffer

  • 4.29 Crosspost Handling

  • 4.30 Duplicate Suppression

  • 4.31 Security

  • 4.32 Mailing List

• 5 Article Buffer

  • 5.1 Hiding Headers
  • 5.2 Using MIME
  • 5.3 HTML
  • 5.4 Customizing Articles
  • 5.5 Article Keymap
  • 5.6 Misc Article

• 6 Composing Messages

  • 6.1 Mail
  • 6.2 Posting Server
  • 6.3 POP before SMTP
  • 6.4 Mail and Post
  • 6.5 Archived Messages
  • 6.6 Posting Styles
  • 6.7 Drafts
  • 6.8 Rejected Articles
  • 6.9 Signing and encrypting

• 7 Select Methods

  • 7.1 Server Buffer

    • 7.1.1 Server Buffer Format
    • 7.1.2 Server Commands
    • 7.1.3 Example Methods
    • 7.1.4 Creating a Virtual Server
    • 7.1.5 Server Variables
    • 7.1.6 Servers and Methods
    • 7.1.7 Unavailable Servers

  • 7.2 Getting News

    • 7.2.1 NNTP

      • 7.2.1.1 Direct Functions
      • 7.2.1.2 Indirect Functions
      • 7.2.1.3 Common Variables

    • 7.2.2 News Spool

  • 7.3 Using IMAP

    • 7.3.1 Connecting to an IMAP Server
    • 7.3.2 Customizing the IMAP Connection
    • 7.3.3 Client-Side IMAP Splitting
    • 7.3.4 Support for IMAP Extensions

  • 7.4 Getting Mail

    • 7.4.1 Mail in a Newsreader

    • 7.4.2 Getting Started Reading Mail

    • 7.4.3 Splitting Mail

    • 7.4.4 Mail Sources

      • 7.4.4.1 Mail Source Specifiers
      • 7.4.4.2 Function Interface
      • 7.4.4.3 Mail Source Customization
      • 7.4.4.4 Fetching Mail

    • 7.4.5 Mail Back End Variables

    • 7.4.6 Fancy Mail Splitting

    • 7.4.7 Group Mail Splitting

    • 7.4.8 Incorporating Old Mail

    • 7.4.9 Expiring Mail

    • 7.4.10 Washing Mail

    • 7.4.11 Duplicates

    • 7.4.12 Not Reading Mail

    • 7.4.13 Choosing a Mail Back End

      • 7.4.13.1 Unix Mail Box
      • 7.4.13.2 Babyl
      • 7.4.13.3 Mail Spool
      • 7.4.13.4 MH Spool
      • 7.4.13.5 Maildir
      • 7.4.13.6 Group parameters
      • 7.4.13.7 Article identification
      • 7.4.13.8 NOV data
      • 7.4.13.9 Article marks
      • 7.4.13.10 Mail Folders
      • 7.4.13.11 Comparing Mail Back Ends

  • 7.5 Browsing the Web

    • 7.5.1 Web Searches
    • 7.5.2 RSS
    • 7.5.3 Atom

  • 7.6 Other Sources

    • 7.6.1 Directory Groups
    • 7.6.2 Anything Groups
    • 7.6.3 Document Groups
      • 7.6.3.1 Document Server Internals
    • 7.6.4 Mail-To-News Gateways
    • 7.6.5 The Empty Backend

  • 7.7 Virtual Groups

    • 7.7.1 Select Groups
    • 7.7.2 Combined Groups

  • 7.8 Email Based Diary

    • 7.8.1 The NNDiary Back End

      • 7.8.1.1 Diary Messages
      • 7.8.1.2 Running NNDiary
      • 7.8.1.3 Customizing NNDiary

    • 7.8.2 The Gnus Diary Library

      • 7.8.2.1 Diary Summary Line Format
      • 7.8.2.2 Diary Articles Sorting
      • 7.8.2.3 Diary Headers Generation
      • 7.8.2.4 Diary Group Parameters

  • 7.9 Gnus Unplugged

    • 7.9.1 Agent Basics

    • 7.9.2 Agent Categories

      • 7.9.2.1 Category Syntax
      • 7.9.2.2 Category Buffer
      • 7.9.2.3 Category Variables

    • 7.9.3 Agent Commands

      • 7.9.3.1 Group Agent Commands
      • 7.9.3.2 Summary Agent Commands
      • 7.9.3.3 Server Agent Commands

    • 7.9.4 Agent Visuals

    • 7.9.5 Agent as Cache

    • 7.9.6 Agent Expiry

    • 7.9.7 Agent Regeneration

    • 7.9.8 Agent and flags

    • 7.9.9 Agent and IMAP

    • 7.9.10 Outgoing Messages

    • 7.9.11 Agent Variables

    • 7.9.12 Example Setup

    • 7.9.13 Batching Agents

    • 7.9.14 Agent Caveats

• 8 Scoring

  • 8.1 Summary Score Commands

  • 8.2 Group Score Commands

  • 8.3 Score Variables

  • 8.4 Score File Format

  • 8.5 Score File Editing

  • 8.6 Adaptive Scoring

  • 8.7 Home Score File

  • 8.8 Followups To Yourself

  • 8.9 Scoring On Other Headers

  • 8.10 Scoring Tips

  • 8.11 Reverse Scoring

  • 8.12 Global Score Files

  • 8.13 Kill Files

  • 8.14 Converting Kill Files

  • 8.15 Advanced Scoring

    • 8.15.1 Advanced Scoring Syntax
    • 8.15.2 Advanced Scoring Examples
    • 8.15.3 Advanced Scoring Tips

  • 8.16 Score Decays

• 9 Searching

  • 9.1 Search Engines

  • 9.2 Creating Search Groups

  • 9.3 Search Queries

    • 9.3.1 Date value parsing

  • 9.4 nnmairix

    • 9.4.1 About mairix
    • 9.4.2 nnmairix requirements
    • 9.4.3 What nnmairix does
    • 9.4.4 Setting up mairix
    • 9.4.5 Configuring nnmairix
    • 9.4.6 nnmairix keyboard shortcuts
    • 9.4.7 Propagating marks
    • 9.4.8 nnmairix tips and tricks
    • 9.4.9 nnmairix caveats

  • 9.5 Migrating from nnir

• 10 Various

  • 10.1 Process/Prefix

  • 10.2 Interactive

  • 10.3 Symbolic Prefixes

  • 10.4 Formatting Variables

    • 10.4.1 Formatting Basics
    • 10.4.2 Mode Line Formatting
    • 10.4.3 Advanced Formatting
    • 10.4.4 User-Defined Specs
    • 10.4.5 Formatting Fonts
    • 10.4.6 Positioning Point
    • 10.4.7 Tabulation

  • 10.5 Window Layout

    • 10.5.1 Window Configuration Names
    • 10.5.2 Example Window Configurations

  • 10.6 Tabbed Interface

  • 10.7 Faces and Fonts

  • 10.8 Mode Lines

  • 10.9 Highlighting and Menus

  • 10.10 Daemons

  • 10.11 Notifications

  • 10.12 Undo

  • 10.13 Predicate Specifiers

  • 10.14 Moderation

  • 10.15 Fetching a Group

  • 10.16 Image Enhancements

    • 10.16.1 X-Face
    • 10.16.2 Face
    • 10.16.3 Smileys
    • 10.16.4 Picons
    • 10.16.5 Gravatars
      • 10.16.5.1 Tool bar

  • 10.17 Fuzzy Matching

  • 10.18 Thwarting Email Spam

    • 10.18.1 The problem of spam
    • 10.18.2 Anti-Spam Basics
    • 10.18.3 SpamAssassin, Vipul’s Razor, DCC, etc

  • 10.19 Spam Package

    • 10.19.1 Spam Package Introduction

    • 10.19.2 Filtering Incoming Mail

    • 10.19.3 Detecting Spam in Groups

    • 10.19.4 Spam and Ham Processors

    • 10.19.5 Spam Package Configuration Examples

    • 10.19.6 Spam Back Ends

      • 10.19.6.1 Blacklists and Whitelists
      • 10.19.6.2 BBDB Whitelists
      • 10.19.6.3 Gmane Spam Reporting
      • 10.19.6.4 Blackholes
      • 10.19.6.5 Regular Expressions Header Matching
      • 10.19.6.6 Bogofilter
      • 10.19.6.7 SpamAssassin back end
      • 10.19.6.8 ifile spam filtering
      • 10.19.6.9 Spam Statistics Filtering
      • 10.19.6.10 Using SpamOracle with Gnus

    • 10.19.7 Extending the Spam package

    • 10.19.8 Spam Statistics Package

      • 10.19.8.1 Creating a spam-stat dictionary
      • 10.19.8.2 Splitting mail using spam-stat
      • 10.19.8.3 Low-level interface to the spam-stat dictionary

  • 10.20 The Gnus Registry

    • 10.20.1 Gnus Registry Setup
    • 10.20.2 Fetching by Message-ID Using the Registry
    • 10.20.3 Fancy splitting to parent
    • 10.20.4 Store custom flags and keywords
    • 10.20.5 Store arbitrary data

  • 10.21 The Gnus Cloud

    • 10.21.1 Gnus Cloud Setup
    • 10.21.2 Gnus Cloud Usage

  • 10.22 System Sleep Integration

  • 10.23 Interaction with other modes

    • 10.23.1 Dired

  • 10.24 Various Various

• 11 The End

• 12 Appendices

  • 12.1 History

    • 12.1.1 Gnus Versions

    • 12.1.2 Why?

    • 12.1.3 Conformity

    • 12.1.4 Contributors

    • 12.1.5 New Features

      • 12.1.5.1 (ding) Gnus
      • 12.1.5.2 September Gnus
      • 12.1.5.3 Red Gnus
      • 12.1.5.4 Quassia Gnus
      • 12.1.5.5 Pterodactyl Gnus
      • 12.1.5.6 Oort Gnus
      • 12.1.5.7 No Gnus
      • 12.1.5.8 Ma Gnus

  • 12.2 On Writing Manuals

  • 12.3 Terminology

  • 12.4 Customization

    • 12.4.1 Slow/Expensive Connection
    • 12.4.2 Slow Terminal Connection
    • 12.4.3 Little Disk Space
    • 12.4.4 Slow Machine

  • 12.5 Troubleshooting

  • 12.6 Gnus Reference Guide

    • 12.6.1 Gnus Utility Functions

    • 12.6.2 Back End Interface

      • 12.6.2.1 Required Back End Functions
      • 12.6.2.2 Optional Back End Functions
      • 12.6.2.3 Error Messaging
      • 12.6.2.4 Writing New Back Ends
      • 12.6.2.5 Hooking New Back Ends Into Gnus
      • 12.6.2.6 Mail-like Back Ends
      • 12.6.2.7 Web Feed Back Ends

    • 12.6.3 Score File Syntax

    • 12.6.4 Headers

    • 12.6.5 Ranges

    • 12.6.6 Group Info

    • 12.6.7 Extended Interactive

    • 12.6.8 Various File Formats

      • 12.6.8.1 Active File Format
      • 12.6.8.2 Newsgroups File Format

  • 12.7 Emacs for Heathens

    • 12.7.1 Keystrokes
    • 12.7.2 Emacs Lisp

  • 12.8 Frequently Asked Questions

    • 12.8.1 Introduction
    • 12.8.2 Installation FAQ
    • 12.8.3 Startup / Group buffer
    • 12.8.4 Getting Messages
    • 12.8.5 Reading messages
    • 12.8.6 Composing messages
    • 12.8.7 Old messages
    • 12.8.8 Gnus in a dial-up environment
    • 12.8.9 Getting help
    • 12.8.10 Tuning Gnus
    • 12.8.11 Glossary

• 13 GNU Free Documentation License

• 14 Index

• 15 Key Index