Oort Gnus ​

New features in Gnus 5.10:

  • Installation changes

    • Upgrading from previous (stable) version if you have used Oort.

      If you have tried Oort (the unstable Gnus branch leading to this release) but went back to a stable version, be careful when upgrading to this version. In particular, you will probably want to remove all .marks (nnml) and .mrk (nnfolder) files, so that flags are read from your .newsrc.eld instead of from the .marks/.mrk file where this release store flags. See a later entry for more information about marks. Note that downgrading isn’t save in general.

    • Lisp files are now installed in .../site-lisp/gnus/ by default. It defaulted to .../site-lisp/ formerly. In addition to this, the new installer issues a warning if other Gnus installations which will shadow the latest one are detected. You can then remove those shadows manually or remove them using make remove-installed-shadows.

    • ~/News/overview/ not used.

      As a result of the following change, the ~/News/overview/ directory is not used any more. You can safely delete the entire hierarchy.

    • (require 'gnus-load)

      If you use a stand-alone Gnus distribution, you’d better add (require 'gnus-load) into your ~/.emacs after adding the Gnus lisp directory into load-path.

      File gnus-load.el contains autoload commands, functions and variables, some of which may not be included in distributions of Emacsen.

  • New packages and libraries within Gnus

    • The revised Gnus FAQ is included in the manual, See Frequently Asked Questions.

    • TLS wrapper shipped with Gnus

      TLS/SSL is now supported in IMAP and NNTP via GnuTLS.

    • Improved anti-spam features.

      Gnus is now able to take out spam from your mail and news streams using a wide variety of programs and filter rules. Among the supported methods are RBL blocklists, bogofilter and white/blacklists. Hooks for easy use of external packages such as SpamAssassin and Hashcash are also new. Thwarting Email Spam and Spam Package.

    • Gnus supports server-side mail filtering using Sieve.

      Sieve rules can be added as Group Parameters for groups, and the complete Sieve script is generated using D g from the Group buffer, and then uploaded to the server using C-c C-l in the generated Sieve buffer. See Sieve Commands, and the new Sieve manual Top in Emacs Sieve.

  • Changes in group mode

    • gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group can be called interactively, using G M.

    • Retrieval of charters and control messages

      There are new commands for fetching newsgroup charters (H c) and control messages (H C).

    • The new variable gnus-parameters can be used to set group parameters.

      Earlier this was done only via G p (or G c), which stored the parameters in ~/.newsrc.eld, but via this variable you can enjoy the powers of customize, and simplified backups since you set the variable in ~/.gnus.el instead of ~/.newsrc.eld. The variable maps regular expressions matching group names to group parameters, a’la:

      emacs-lisp
      (setq gnus-parameters
      '(("mail\\..*"
         (gnus-show-threads nil)
         (gnus-use-scoring nil))
        ("^nnimap:\\(foo.bar\\)$"
         (to-group . "\\1"))))

    • Unread count correct in nnimap groups.

      The estimated number of unread articles in the group buffer should now be correct for nnimap groups. This is achieved by calling nnimap-fixup-unread-after-getting-new-news from the gnus-setup-news-hook (called on startup) and gnus-after-getting-new-news-hook (called after getting new mail). If you have modified those variables from the default, you may want to add nnimap-fixup-unread-after-getting-new-news again. If you were happy with the estimate and want to save some (minimal) time when getting new mail, remove the function.

    • Group names are treated as UTF-8 by default.

      This is supposedly what USEFOR wanted to migrate to. See gnus-group-name-charset-group-alist and gnus-group-name-charset-method-alist for customization.

    • gnus-group-charset-alist and gnus-group-ignored-charsets-alist.

      The regexps in these variables are compared with full group names instead of real group names in 5.8. Users who customize these variables should change those regexps accordingly. For example:

      emacs-lisp
      ("^han\\>" euc-kr) -> ("\\(^\\|:\\)han\\>" euc-kr)

    • Old intermediate incoming mail files (Incoming*) are deleted after a couple of days, not immediately. See Mail Source Customization. (New in Gnus 5.10.10 / Emacs 22.2)

  • Changes in summary and article mode

    • F (gnus-article-followup-with-original) and R (gnus-article-reply-with-original) only yank the text in the region if the region is active.

    • In draft groups, e is now bound to gnus-draft-edit-message. Use B w for gnus-summary-edit-article instead.

    • Article Buttons

      More buttons for URLs, mail addresses, Message-IDs, Info links, man pages and Emacs or Gnus related references. See Article Buttons. The variables gnus-button-*-level can be used to control the appearance of all article buttons. See Article button levels.

    • Single-part yenc encoded attachments can be decoded.

    • Picons

      The picons code has been reimplemented to work in GNU Emacs—some of the previous options have been removed or renamed.

      Picons are small “personal icons” representing users, domain and newsgroups, which can be displayed in the Article buffer. See Picons.

    • If the new option gnus-treat-body-boundary is non-nil, a boundary line is drawn at the end of the headers.

    • Signed article headers (X-PGP-Sig) can be verified with W p.

    • The Summary Buffer uses an arrow in the fringe to indicate the current article. Use (setq gnus-summary-display-arrow nil) to disable it.

    • Warn about email replies to news

      Do you often find yourself replying to news by email by mistake? Then the new option gnus-confirm-mail-reply-to-news is just the thing for you.

    • If the new option gnus-summary-display-while-building is non-nil, the summary buffer is shown and updated as it’s being built.

    • Gnus supports RFC 2369 mailing list headers, and adds a number of related commands in mailing list groups. See Mailing List.

    • The Date header can be displayed in a format that can be read aloud in English. See Article Date.

    • diffs are automatically highlighted in groups matching mm-uu-diff-groups-regexp

    • Better handling of Microsoft citation styles

      Gnus now tries to recognize the mangled header block that some Microsoft mailers use to indicate that the rest of the message is a citation, even though it is not quoted in any way. The variable gnus-cite-unsightly-citation-regexp matches the start of these citations.

      The new command W Y f (gnus-article-outlook-deuglify-article) allows deuglifying broken Outlook (Express) articles.

    • gnus-article-skip-boring

      If you set gnus-article-skip-boring to t, then Gnus will not scroll down to show you a page that contains only boring text, which by default means cited text and signature. You can customize what is skippable using gnus-article-boring-faces.

      This feature is especially useful if you read many articles that consist of a little new content at the top with a long, untrimmed message cited below.

    • Smileys (‘:-)’, ‘;-)’ etc.) are now displayed graphically in Emacs too.

      Put (setq gnus-treat-display-smileys nil) in ~/.gnus.el to disable it.

    • Face headers handling. See Face.

    • In the summary buffer, the new command / N inserts new messages and / o inserts old messages.

    • Gnus decodes morse encoded messages if you press W m.

    • gnus-summary-line-format

      The default value changed to ‘%U%R%z%I%(%[%4L: %-23,23f%]%) %s\n’. Moreover gnus-extra-headers, nnmail-extra-headers and gnus-ignored-from-addresses changed their default so that the users name will be replaced by the recipient’s name or the group name posting to for NNTP groups.

    • Deleting of attachments.

      The command gnus-mime-save-part-and-strip (bound to C-o on MIME buttons) saves a part and replaces the part with an external one. gnus-mime-delete-part (bound to d on MIME buttons) removes a part. It works only on back ends that support editing.

    • gnus-default-charset

      The default value is determined from the current-language-environment variable, instead of iso-8859-1. Also the ‘.*’ item in gnus-group-charset-alist is removed.

    • Printing capabilities are enhanced.

      Gnus supports Muttprint natively with O P from the Summary and Article buffers. Also, each individual MIME part can be printed using p on the MIME button.

    • Extended format specs.

      Format spec ‘%&user-date;’ is added into gnus-summary-line-format-alist. Also, user defined extended format specs are supported. The extended format specs look like ‘%u&foo;’, which invokes function gnus-user-format-function-foo. Because ‘&’ is used as the escape character, old user defined format ‘%u&’ is no longer supported.

    • / * (gnus-summary-limit-include-cached) is rewritten.

      It was aliased to Y c (gnus-summary-insert-cached-articles). The new function filters out other articles.

    • Some limiting commands accept a C-u prefix to negate the match.

      If C-u is used on subject, author or extra headers, i.e., / s, / a, and / x (gnus-summary-limit-to-{subject,author,extra}) respectively, the result will be to display all articles that do not match the expression.

    • Gnus inlines external parts (message/external).

  • Changes in Message mode and related Gnus features

    • Delayed articles

      You can delay the sending of a message with C-c C-j in the Message buffer. The messages are delivered at specified time. This is useful for sending yourself reminders. See Delayed Articles.

    • If the new option nnml-use-compressed-files is non-nil, the nnml back end allows compressed message files.

    • The new option gnus-gcc-mark-as-read automatically marks Gcc articles as read.

    • Externalizing of attachments

      If gnus-gcc-externalize-attachments or message-fcc-externalize-attachments is non-nil, attach local files as external parts.

    • The envelope sender address can be customized when using Sendmail. See Mail Variables in Message Manual.

    • Gnus no longer generate the Sender: header automatically.

      Earlier it was generated when the user configurable email address was different from the Gnus guessed default user address. As the guessing algorithm is rarely correct these days, and (more controversially) the only use of the Sender: header was to check if you are entitled to cancel/supersede news (which is now solved by Cancel Locks instead, see another entry), generation of the header has been disabled by default. See the variables message-required-headers, message-required-news-headers, and message-required-mail-headers.

    • Features from third party message-utils.el added to message.el.

      Message now asks if you wish to remove ‘(was: <old subject>)’ from subject lines (see message-subject-trailing-was-query). C-c M-m and C-c M-f inserts markers indicating included text. C-c C-f a adds a X-No-Archive: header. C-c C-f x inserts appropriate headers and a note in the body for cross-postings and followups (see the variables message-cross-post-*).

    • References and X-Draft-From headers are no longer generated when you start composing messages and message-generate-headers-first is nil.

    • Easy inclusion of X-Faces headers. See X-Face.

    • Group Carbon Copy (GCC) quoting

      To support groups that contains SPC and other weird characters, groups are quoted before they are placed in the Gcc: header. This means variables such as gnus-message-archive-group should no longer contain quote characters to make groups containing SPC work. Also, if you are using the string ‘nnml:foo, nnml:bar’ (indicating Gcc into two groups) you must change it to return the list ("nnml:foo" "nnml:bar"), otherwise the Gcc: line will be quoted incorrectly. Note that returning the string ‘nnml:foo, nnml:bar’ was incorrect earlier, it just didn’t generate any problems since it was inserted directly.

    • message-insinuate-rmail

      Adding (message-insinuate-rmail) and (setq mail-user-agent 'gnus-user-agent) in .emacs convinces Rmail to compose, reply and forward messages in message-mode, where you can enjoy the power of MML.

    • message-minibuffer-local-map

      The line below enables BBDB in resending a message:

      emacs-lisp
      (define-key message-minibuffer-local-map [(tab)]
  'bbdb-complete-name)

    • gnus-posting-styles

      Add a new format of match like

      emacs-lisp
      ((header "to" "larsi.*org")
 (Organization "Somewhere, Inc."))

      The old format like the lines below is obsolete, but still accepted.

      emacs-lisp
      (header "to" "larsi.*org"
        (Organization "Somewhere, Inc."))

    • message-ignored-news-headers and message-ignored-mail-headers

      ‘X-Draft-From’ and ‘X-Gnus-Agent-Meta-Information’ have been added into these two variables. If you customized those, perhaps you need add those two headers too.

    • Gnus supports the “format=flowed” (RFC 2646) parameter. On composing messages, it is enabled by use-hard-newlines. Decoding format=flowed was present but not documented in earlier versions.

    • The option mm-fill-flowed can be used to disable treatment of “format=flowed” messages. Also, flowed text is disabled when sending inline PGP signed messages. See Flowed text in The Emacs MIME Manual. (New in Gnus 5.10.7)

    • Gnus supports the generation of RFC 2298 Disposition Notification requests.

      This is invoked with the C-c M-n key binding from message mode.

    • Message supports the Importance: (RFC 2156) header.

      In the message buffer, C-c C-f C-i or C-c C-u cycles through the valid values.

    • Gnus supports Cancel Locks in News.

      This means a header ‘Cancel-Lock’ is inserted in news posting. It is used to determine if you wrote an article or not (for canceling and superseding). Gnus generates a random password string the first time you post a message, and saves it in your ~/.emacs using the Custom system. While the variable is called canlock-password, it is not security sensitive data. Publishing your canlock string on the web will not allow anyone to be able to anything she could not already do. The behavior can be changed by customizing message-insert-canlock.

    • Gnus supports PGP (RFC 1991/2440), PGP/MIME (RFC 2015/3156) and S/MIME (RFC 2630–2633).

      It needs an external S/MIME and OpenPGP implementation, but no additional Lisp libraries. This add several menu items to the Attachments menu, and C-c RET key bindings, when composing messages. This also obsoletes gnus-article-hide-pgp-hook.

    • MML (Mime compose) prefix changed from M-m to C-c C-m.

      This change was made to avoid conflict with the standard binding of back-to-indentation, which is also useful in message mode.

    • The default for message-forward-show-mml changed to the symbol best.

      The behavior for the best value is to show MML (i.e., convert to MIME) when appropriate. MML will not be used when forwarding signed or encrypted messages, as the conversion invalidate the digital signature.

    • If auto-compression-mode is enabled, attachments are automatically decompressed when activated.

    • Support for non-ASCII domain names

      Message supports non-ASCII domain names in From:, To: and Cc: and will query you whether to perform encoding when you try to send a message. The variable message-use-idna controls this. Gnus will also decode non-ASCII domain names in From:, To: and Cc: when you view a message. The variable gnus-use-idna controls this.

    • You can now drag and drop attachments to the Message buffer. See mml-dnd-protocol-alist and mml-dnd-attach-options. See MIME in Message Manual.

    • auto-fill-mode is enabled by default in Message mode. See message-fill-column. See Message Headers in Message Manual.

  • Changes in back ends

    • Gnus can display RSS newsfeeds as a newsgroup. See RSS.

    • The nndoc back end now supports mailman digests and exim bounces.

    • Gnus supports Maildir groups.

      Gnus includes a new back end nnmaildir.el. See Maildir.

    • The nnml and nnfolder back ends store marks for each groups.

      This makes it possible to take backup of nnml/nnfolder servers/groups separately of ~/.newsrc.eld, while preserving marks. It also makes it possible to share articles and marks between users (without sharing the ~/.newsrc.eld file) within, e.g., a department. It works by storing the marks stored in ~/.newsrc.eld in a per-group file .marks (for nnml) and groupname.mrk (for nnfolder, named groupname). If the nnml/nnfolder is moved to another machine, Gnus will automatically use the .marks or .mrk file instead of the information in ~/.newsrc.eld. The new server variables nnml-marks-is-evil and nnfolder-marks-is-evil can be used to disable this feature.

  • Appearance

    • The menu bar item (in Group and Summary buffer) named “Misc” has been renamed to “Gnus”.
    • The menu bar item (in Message mode) named “MML” has been renamed to “Attachments”. Note that this menu also contains security related stuff, like signing and encryption (see Security in Message Manual).
    • The tool bars have been updated to use GNOME icons in Group, Summary and Message mode. You can also customize the tool bars: M-x customize-apropos RET -tool-bar$ should get you started. This is a new feature in Gnus 5.10.10.
    • The tool bar icons are now (de)activated correctly in the group buffer, see the variable gnus-group-update-tool-bar. Its default value depends on your Emacs version. This is a new feature in Gnus 5.10.9.

  • Miscellaneous changes

    • gnus-agent

      The Gnus Agent has seen a major updated and is now enabled by default, and all nntp and nnimap servers from gnus-select-method and gnus-secondary-select-method are agentized by default. Earlier only the server in gnus-select-method was agentized by the default, and the agent was disabled by default. When the agent is enabled, headers are now also retrieved from the Agent cache instead of the back ends when possible. Earlier this only happened in the unplugged state. You can enroll or remove servers with J a and J r in the server buffer. Gnus will not download articles into the Agent cache, unless you instruct it to do so, though, by using J u or J s from the Group buffer. You revert to the old behavior of having the Agent disabled with (setq gnus-agent nil). Note that putting (gnus-agentize) in ~/.gnus.el is not needed any more.

    • Gnus reads the NOV and articles in the Agent if plugged.

      If one reads an article while plugged, and the article already exists in the Agent, it won’t get downloaded once more. (setq gnus-agent-cache nil) reverts to the old behavior.

    • Dired integration

      gnus-dired-minor-mode (see Interaction with other modes) installs key bindings in dired buffers to send a file as an attachment, open a file using the appropriate mailcap entry, and print a file using the mailcap entry.

    • The format spec %C for positioning point has changed to %*.

    • gnus-child-unplugged

      A new command which starts Gnus offline in child mode.