The Gnus Newsreader

2.1 Finding the News

First of all, you should know that there is a special buffer called *Server* that lists all the servers Gnus knows about. You can press ^ from the Group buffer to see it. In the Server buffer, you can press RET on a defined server to see all the groups it serves (subscribed or not!). You can also add or delete servers, edit a foreign server’s definition, agentize or de-agentize a server, and do many other neat things. See Server Buffer. See Foreign Groups. See Agent Basics.

The gnus-select-method variable says where Gnus should look for news. This variable should be a list where the first element says how and the second element says where. This method is your native method. All groups not fetched with this method are secondary or foreign groups.

For instance, if the ‘news.somewhere.edu’ NNTP server is where you want to get your daily dosage of news from, you’d say:

(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.somewhere.edu"))

If you want to read directly from the local spool, say:

(setq gnus-select-method '(nnspool ""))

If you can use a local spool, you probably should, as it will almost certainly be much faster. But do not use the local spool if your server is running Leafnode (which is a simple, standalone private news server); in this case, use (nntp "localhost").

If this variable 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 running Emacs as an NNTP server. That’s a long shot, though.

However, if you use one NNTP server regularly and are just interested in a couple of groups from a different server, you would be better served by using the B command in the group buffer. It will let you have a look at what groups are available, and you can subscribe to any of the groups you want to. This also makes .newsrc maintenance much tidier. See Foreign Groups.

A slightly different approach to foreign groups is to set the gnus-secondary-select-methods variable. The select methods listed in this variable are in many ways just as native as the gnus-select-method server. They will also be queried for active files during startup (if that’s required), and new newsgroups that appear on these servers will be subscribed (or not) just as native groups are.

For instance, if you use the nnmbox back end to read your mail, you would typically set this variable to

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnmbox "")))

2.2 The Server is Down

If the default server is down, Gnus will understandably have some problems starting. However, if you have some mail groups in addition to the news groups, you may want to start Gnus anyway.

Gnus, being the trusting sort of program, will ask whether to proceed without a native select method if that server can’t be contacted. This will happen whether the server doesn’t actually exist (i.e., you have given the wrong address) or the server has just momentarily taken ill for some reason or other. If you decide to continue and have no foreign groups, you’ll find it difficult to actually do anything in the group buffer. But, hey, that’s your problem. Blllrph!

If you know that the server is definitely down, or you just want to read your mail without bothering with the server at all, you can use the gnus-no-server command to start Gnus. That might come in handy if you’re in a hurry as well. This command will not attempt to contact your primary server—instead, it will just activate all groups on level 1 and 2. (You should preferably keep no native groups on those two levels.) Also see Group Levels.

2.3 Child Gnusae

You might want to run more than one Emacs with more than one Gnus at the same time. If you are using different .newsrc files (e.g., if you are using the two different Gnusae to read from two different servers), that is no problem whatsoever. You just do it.

The problem appears when you want to run two Gnusae that use the same .newsrc file.

To work around that problem some, we here at the Think-Tank at the Gnus Towers have come up with a new concept: Parents and children.

Anyway, you start one Gnus up the normal way with M-x gnus (or however you do it). Each subsequent child Gnusae should be started with M-x gnus-child. These children won’t save normal .newsrc files, but instead save child files that contain information only on what groups have been read in the child session. When a parent Gnus starts, it will read (and delete) these child files, incorporating all information from them. (The child files will be read in the sequence they were created, so the latest changes will have precedence.)

Information from the child files has, of course, precedence over the information in the normal (i.e., parent) .newsrc file.

If the .newsrc* files have not been saved in the parent when the child starts, you may be prompted as to whether to read an auto-save file. If you answer “yes”, the unsaved changes to the parent will be incorporated into the child. If you answer “no”, the child may see some messages as unread that have been read in the parent.

2.4 New Groups

If you are satisfied that you really never want to see any new groups, you can set gnus-check-new-newsgroups to nil. This will also save you some time at startup. Even if this variable is nil, you can always subscribe to the new groups just by pressing U in the group buffer (see Group Maintenance). This variable is ask-server by default. If you set this variable to always, then Gnus will query the back ends for new groups even when you do the g command (see Scanning New Messages).

• Checking New Groups
• Subscription Methods
• Filtering New Groups

options -n !alt.all !rec.all sci.all

2.5 Changing Servers

Sometimes it is necessary to move from one NNTP server to another. This happens very rarely, but perhaps you change jobs, or one server is very flaky and you want to use another.

Changing the server is pretty easy, right? You just change gnus-select-method to point to the new server?

Wrong!

Article numbers are not (in any way) kept synchronized between different NNTP servers, and the only way Gnus keeps track of what articles you have read is by keeping track of article numbers. So when you change gnus-select-method, your .newsrc file becomes worthless.

You can use the M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups command to clear out all data that you have on your native groups. Use with caution.

Clear the data from the current group only—nix out marks and the list of read articles (gnus-group-clear-data).

After changing servers, you must move the cache hierarchy away, since the cached articles will have wrong article numbers, which will affect which articles Gnus thinks are read. gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups will ask you if you want to have it done automatically; for gnus-group-clear-data, you can use M-x gnus-cache-move-cache (but beware, it will move the cache for all groups).

2.6 Startup Files

Most common Unix news readers use a shared startup file called .newsrc. This file contains all the information about what groups are subscribed, and which articles in these groups have been read.

Things got a bit more complicated with GNUS. In addition to keeping the .newsrc file updated, it also used a file called .newsrc.el for storing all the information that didn’t fit into the .newsrc file. (Actually, it also duplicated everything in the .newsrc file.) GNUS would read whichever one of these files was the most recently saved, which enabled people to swap between GNUS and other newsreaders.

That was kinda silly, so Gnus went one better: In addition to the .newsrc and .newsrc.el files, Gnus also has a file called .newsrc.eld. It will read whichever of these files that are most recent, but it will never write a .newsrc.el file. You should never delete the .newsrc.eld file—it contains much information not stored in the .newsrc file.

You can turn off writing the .newsrc file by setting gnus-save-newsrc-file to nil, which means you can delete the file and save some space, as well as exiting from Gnus faster. However, this will make it impossible to use other newsreaders than Gnus. But hey, who would want to, right? Similarly, setting gnus-read-newsrc-file to nil makes Gnus ignore the .newsrc file and any .newsrc-SERVER files, which can be convenient if you use a different news reader occasionally, and you want to read a different subset of the available groups with that news reader.

If gnus-save-killed-list (default t) is nil, Gnus will not save the list of killed groups to the startup file. This will save both time (when starting and quitting) and space (on disk). It will also mean that Gnus has no record of what groups are new or old, so the automatic new groups subscription methods become meaningless. You should always set gnus-check-new-newsgroups to nil or ask-server if you set this variable to nil (see New Groups). This variable can also be a regular expression. If that’s the case, remove all groups that do not match this regexp before saving. This can be useful in certain obscure situations that involve several servers where not all servers support ask-server.

The gnus-startup-file variable says where the startup files are. The default value is ~/.newsrc, with the Gnus (El Dingo) startup file being whatever that one is, with a ‘.eld’ appended. If you want to keep multiple numbered backups of this file, set gnus-backup-startup-file. It respects the same values as the version-control variable.

gnus-save-newsrc-hook is called before saving any of the newsrc files, while gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook is called just before saving the .newsrc.eld file, and gnus-save-standard-newsrc-hook is called just before saving the .newsrc file. The latter two are commonly used to turn version control on or off. Version control is on by default when saving the startup files. If you want to turn backup creation off, say something like:

(defun turn-off-backup ()
  (set (make-local-variable 'backup-inhibited) t))

(add-hook 'gnus-save-quick-newsrc-hook 'turn-off-backup)
(add-hook 'gnus-save-standard-newsrc-hook 'turn-off-backup)

When Gnus starts, it will read the gnus-site-init-file (.../site-lisp/gnus-init by default) and gnus-init-file (~/.gnus by default) files. These are normal Emacs Lisp files and can be used to avoid cluttering your ~/.emacs and site-init files with Gnus stuff. Gnus will also check for files with the same names as these, but with .elc and .el suffixes. In other words, if you have set gnus-init-file to ~/.gnus, it will look for ~/.gnus.elc, ~/.gnus.el, and finally ~/.gnus (in this order). If Emacs was invoked with the -q or --no-init-file options (see Initial Options in The Emacs Manual), Gnus doesn’t read gnus-init-file.

2.7 Auto Save

Whenever you do something that changes the Gnus data (reading articles, catching up, killing/subscribing groups), the change is added to a special dribble buffer. This buffer is auto-saved the normal Emacs way. If your Emacs should crash before you have saved the .newsrc files, all changes you have made can be recovered from this file.

If Gnus detects this file at startup, it will ask the user whether to read it. The auto save file is deleted whenever the real startup file is saved.

If gnus-use-dribble-file is nil, Gnus won’t create and maintain a dribble buffer. The default is t.

Gnus will put the dribble file(s) in gnus-dribble-directory. If this variable is nil, which it is by default, Gnus will dribble into the directory where the .newsrc file is located. (This is normally the user’s home directory.) The dribble file will get the same file permissions as the .newsrc file.

If gnus-always-read-dribble-file is non-nil, Gnus will read the dribble file on startup without querying the user.

2.8 The Active File

When Gnus starts, or indeed whenever it tries to determine whether new articles have arrived, it reads the active file. This is a very large file that lists all the active groups and articles on the server.

Before examining the active file, Gnus deletes all lines that match the regexp gnus-ignored-newsgroups. This is done primarily to reject any groups with bogus names, but you can use this variable to make Gnus ignore hierarchies you aren’t ever interested in. However, this is not recommended. In fact, it’s highly discouraged. Instead, see New Groups for an overview of other variables that can be used instead.

The active file can be rather Huge, so if you have a slow network, you can set gnus-read-active-file to nil to prevent Gnus from reading the active file. This variable is some by default.

Gnus will try to make do by getting information just on the groups that you actually subscribe to.

Note that if you subscribe to lots and lots of groups, setting this variable to nil will probably make Gnus slower, not faster. At present, having this variable nil will slow Gnus down considerably, unless you read news over a 2400 baud modem.

This variable can also have the value some. Gnus will then attempt to read active info only on the subscribed groups. On some servers this is quite fast (on sparkling, brand new INN servers that support the LIST ACTIVE group command), on others this isn’t fast at all. In any case, some should be faster than nil, and is certainly faster than t over slow lines.

Some news servers (old versions of Leafnode and old versions of INN, for instance) do not support the LIST ACTIVE group. For these servers, nil is probably the most efficient value for this variable.

If this variable is nil, Gnus will ask for group info in total lock-step, which isn’t very fast. If it is some and you use an NNTP server, Gnus will pump out commands as fast as it can, and read all the replies in one swoop. This will normally result in better performance, but if the server does not support the aforementioned LIST ACTIVE group command, this isn’t very nice to the server.

If you think that starting up Gnus takes too long, try all the three different values for this variable and see what works best for you.

In any case, if you use some or nil, you should definitely kill all groups that you aren’t interested in to speed things up.

Note that this variable also affects active file retrieval from secondary select methods.

2.9 Startup Variables

gnus-before-startup-hook ¶

A hook called as the first thing when Gnus is started.

gnus-before-resume-hook ¶

A hook called as the first thing when Gnus is resumed after a suspend.

gnus-startup-hook ¶

A hook run as the very last thing after starting up Gnus

gnus-started-hook ¶

A hook that is run as the very last thing after starting up Gnus successfully.

gnus-setup-news-hook ¶

A hook that is run after reading the .newsrc file(s), but before generating the group buffer.

gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups ¶

If non-nil, Gnus will check for and delete all bogus groups at startup. A bogus group is a group that you have in your .newsrc file, but doesn’t exist on the news server. Checking for bogus groups can take quite a while, so to save time and resources it’s best to leave this option off, and do the checking for bogus groups once in a while from the group buffer instead (see Group Maintenance).

gnus-inhibit-startup-message ¶

If non-nil, the startup message won’t be displayed. That way, your boss might not notice as easily that you are reading news instead of doing your job. Note that this variable is used before ~/.gnus.el is loaded, so it should be set in .emacs instead.

gnus-no-groups-message ¶

Message displayed by Gnus when no groups are available.

3.1 Group Buffer Format

You can customize the Group Mode tool bar, see M-x customize-apropos RET gnus-group-tool-bar.

The tool bar icons are now (de)activated correctly depending on the cursor position. Therefore, moving around in the Group Buffer is slower. You can disable this via the variable gnus-group-update-tool-bar. Its default value depends on your Emacs version.

• Group Line Specification
• Group Mode Line Specification
• Group Highlighting

     25: news.announce.newusers
 *    0: alt.fan.andrea-dworkin

(cond (window-system
       (setq custom-background-mode 'light)
       (defface my-group-face-1
         '((t (:foreground "Red" :bold t))) "First group face")
       (defface my-group-face-2
         '((t (:foreground "DarkSeaGreen4" :bold t)))
         "Second group face")
       (defface my-group-face-3
         '((t (:foreground "Green4" :bold t))) "Third group face")
       (defface my-group-face-4
         '((t (:foreground "SteelBlue" :bold t))) "Fourth group face")
       (defface my-group-face-5
         '((t (:foreground "Blue" :bold t))) "Fifth group face")))

(setq gnus-group-highlight
      '(((> unread 200) . my-group-face-1)
        ((and (< level 3) (zerop unread)) . my-group-face-2)
        ((< level 3) . my-group-face-3)
        ((zerop unread) . my-group-face-4)
        (t . my-group-face-5)))

3.2 Group Maneuvering

All movement commands understand the numeric prefix and will behave as expected, hopefully.

n ¶

Go to the next group that has unread articles (gnus-group-next-unread-group).

p ¶

DEL

Go to the previous group that has unread articles (gnus-group-prev-unread-group).

N ¶

Go to the next group (gnus-group-next-group).

P ¶

Go to the previous group (gnus-group-prev-group).

M-n ¶

Go to the next unread group on the same (or lower) level (gnus-group-next-unread-group-same-level).

M-p ¶

Go to the previous unread group on the same (or lower) level (gnus-group-prev-unread-group-same-level).

Three commands for jumping to groups:

j ¶

Jump to a group (and make it visible if it isn’t already) (gnus-group-jump-to-group). Killed groups can be jumped to, just like living groups.

, ¶

Jump to the unread group with the lowest level (gnus-group-best-unread-group).

. ¶

Jump to the first group with unread articles (gnus-group-first-unread-group).

If gnus-group-goto-unread is nil, all the movement commands will move to the next group, not the next unread group. Even the commands that say they move to the next unread group. The default is t.

If gnus-summary-next-group-on-exit is t, when a summary is exited, the point in the group buffer is moved to the next unread group. Otherwise, the point is set to the group just exited. The default is t.

3.3 Selecting a Group

SPC ¶

Select the current group, switch to the summary buffer and display the first unread article (gnus-group-read-group). If there are no unread articles in the group, or if you give a non-numerical prefix to this command, Gnus will offer to fetch all the old articles in this group from the server. If you give a numerical prefix n, n determines the number of articles Gnus will fetch. If n is positive, Gnus fetches the n newest articles, if n is negative, Gnus fetches the abs(n) oldest articles.

Thus, SPC enters the group normally, C-u SPC offers old articles, C-u 4 2 SPC fetches the 42 newest articles, and C-u - 4 2 SPC fetches the 42 oldest ones.

When you are in the group (in the Summary buffer), you can type M-g to fetch new articles, or C-u M-g to also show the old ones.

RET ¶

Select the current group and switch to the summary buffer (gnus-group-select-group). Takes the same arguments as gnus-group-read-group—the only difference is that this command does not display the first unread article automatically upon group entry.

M-RET ¶

This does the same as the command above, but tries to do it with the minimum amount of fuzz (gnus-group-quick-select-group). No scoring/killing will be performed, there will be no highlights and no expunging. This might be useful if you’re in a real hurry and have to enter some humongous group. If you give a 0 prefix to this command (i.e., 0 M-RET), Gnus won’t even generate the summary buffer, which is useful if you want to toggle threading before generating the summary buffer (see Summary Generation Commands).

M-SPC ¶

This is yet one more command that does the same as the RET command, but this one does it without expunging and hiding dormants (gnus-group-visible-select-group).

C-M-RET ¶

Finally, this command selects the current group ephemerally without doing any processing of its contents (gnus-group-select-group-ephemerally). Even threading has been turned off. Everything you do in the group after selecting it in this manner will have no permanent effects.

The gnus-large-newsgroup variable says what Gnus should consider to be a big group. If it is nil, no groups are considered big. The default value is 200. If the group has more (unread and/or ticked) articles than this, Gnus will query the user before entering the group. The user can then specify how many articles should be fetched from the server. If the user specifies a negative number (-n), the n oldest articles will be fetched. If it is positive, the n articles that have arrived most recently will be fetched.

gnus-large-ephemeral-newsgroup is the same as gnus-large-newsgroup, but is only used for ephemeral newsgroups.

In groups in some news servers, there might be a big gap between a few very old articles that will never be expired and the recent ones. In such a case, the server will return the data like (1 . 30000000) for the LIST ACTIVE group command, for example. Even if there are actually only the articles 1–10 and 29999900–30000000, Gnus doesn’t know it at first and prepares for getting 30000000 articles. However, it will consume hundreds megabytes of memories and might make Emacs get stuck as the case may be. If you use such news servers, set the variable gnus-newsgroup-maximum-articles to a positive number. The value means that Gnus ignores articles other than this number of the latest ones in every group. For instance, the value 10000 makes Gnus get only the articles 29990001–30000000 (if the latest article number is 30000000 in a group). Note that setting this variable to a number might prevent you from reading very old articles. The default value of the variable gnus-newsgroup-maximum-articles is nil, which means Gnus never ignores old articles.

If gnus-auto-select-first is non-nil, select an article automatically when entering a group with the SPC command. Which article this is controlled by the gnus-auto-select-subject variable. Valid values for this variable are:

unread

Place point on the subject line of the first unread article.

first

Place point on the subject line of the first article.

unseen

Place point on the subject line of the first unseen article.

unseen-or-unread

Place point on the subject line of the first unseen article, and if there is no such article, place point on the subject line of the first unread article.

best

Place point on the subject line of the highest-scored unread article.

This variable can also be a function. In that case, that function will be called to place point on a subject line.

If you want to prevent automatic selection in some group (say, in a binary group with Huge articles) you can set the gnus-auto-select-first variable to nil in gnus-select-group-hook, which is called when a group is selected.

3.4 Subscription Commands

The following commands allow for managing your subscriptions in the Group buffer. If you want to subscribe to many groups, it’s probably more convenient to go to the Server Buffer, and choose the server there using RET or SPC. Then you’ll have the commands listed in Browse Foreign Server at hand.

S t ¶

u

Toggle subscription to group under point (gnus-group-toggle-subscription-at-point).

S s ¶

U

Prompt for group, and toggle its subscription. (gnus-group-toggle-subscription).

S k ¶

C-k

Kill the current group (gnus-group-kill-group).

S y ¶

C-y

Yank the last killed group (gnus-group-yank-group).

C-x C-t ¶

Transpose two groups (gnus-group-transpose-groups). This isn’t really a subscription command, but you can use it instead of a kill-and-yank sequence sometimes.

S w ¶

C-w

Kill all groups in the region (gnus-group-kill-region).

S z ¶

Kill all zombie groups (gnus-group-kill-all-zombies).

S C-k ¶

Kill all groups on a certain level (gnus-group-kill-level). These groups can’t be yanked back after killing, so this command should be used with some caution. The only time where this command comes in really handy is when you have a .newsrc with lots of unsubscribed groups that you want to get rid off. S C-k on level 7 will kill off all unsubscribed groups that do not have message numbers in the .newsrc file.

Also see Group Levels.

3.5 Group Data

c ¶

Mark all unticked articles in this group as read (gnus-group-catchup-current). gnus-group-catchup-group-hook is called when catching up a group from the group buffer.

C ¶

Mark all articles in this group, even the ticked ones, as read (gnus-group-catchup-current-all).

M-c ¶

Clear the data from the current group—nix out marks and the list of read articles (gnus-group-clear-data).

M-x gnus-group-clear-data-on-native-groups ¶

If you have switched from one NNTP server to another, all your marks and read ranges have become worthless. You can use this command to clear out all data that you have on your native groups. Use with caution.

3.6 Group Levels

All groups have a level of subscribedness. For instance, if a group is on level 2, it is more subscribed than a group on level 5. You can ask Gnus to just list groups on a given level or lower (see Listing Groups), or to just check for new articles in groups on a given level or lower (see Scanning New Messages).

Remember: The higher the level of the group, the less important it is.

S l ¶

Set the level of the current group. If a numeric prefix is given, the next n groups will have their levels set. The user will be prompted for a level.

Gnus considers groups from levels 1 to gnus-level-subscribed (inclusive) (default 5) to be subscribed, gnus-level-subscribed (exclusive) and gnus-level-unsubscribed (inclusive) (default 7) to be unsubscribed, gnus-level-zombie to be zombies (walking dead) (default 8) and gnus-level-killed to be killed (completely dead) (default 9). Gnus treats subscribed and unsubscribed groups exactly the same, but zombie and killed groups store no information on what articles you have read, etc. This distinction between dead and living groups isn’t done because it is nice or clever, it is done purely for reasons of efficiency.

It is recommended that you keep all your mail groups (if any) on quite low levels (e.g., 1 or 2).

Maybe the following description of the default behavior of Gnus helps to understand what these levels are all about. By default, Gnus shows you subscribed nonempty groups, but by hitting L you can have it show empty subscribed groups and unsubscribed groups, too. Type l to go back to showing nonempty subscribed groups again. Thus, unsubscribed groups are hidden, in a way.

Zombie and killed groups are similar to unsubscribed groups in that they are hidden by default. But they are different from subscribed and unsubscribed groups in that Gnus doesn’t ask the news server for information (number of messages, number of unread messages) on zombie and killed groups. Normally, you use C-k to kill the groups you aren’t interested in. If most groups are killed, Gnus is faster.

Why does Gnus distinguish between zombie and killed groups? Well, when a new group arrives on the server, Gnus by default makes it a zombie group. This means that you are normally not bothered with new groups, but you can type A z to get a list of all new groups. Subscribe the ones you like and kill the ones you don’t want. (A k shows a list of killed groups.)

If you want to play with the level variables, you should show some care. Set them once, and don’t touch them ever again. Better yet, don’t touch them at all unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

Two closely related variables are gnus-level-default-subscribed (default 3) and gnus-level-default-unsubscribed (default 6), which are the levels that new groups will be put on if they are (un)subscribed. These two variables should, of course, be inside the relevant valid ranges.

If gnus-keep-same-level is non-nil, some movement commands will only move to groups of the same level (or lower). In particular, going from the last article in one group to the next group will go to the next group of the same level (or lower). This might be handy if you want to read the most important groups before you read the rest.

If this variable is best, Gnus will make the next newsgroup the one with the best level.

All groups with a level less than or equal to gnus-group-default-list-level will be listed in the group buffer by default. This variable can also be a function. In that case, that function will be called and the result will be used as value.

If gnus-group-list-inactive-groups is non-nil, non-active groups will be listed along with the unread groups. This variable is t by default. If it is nil, inactive groups won’t be listed.

If gnus-group-use-permanent-levels is non-nil, once you give a level prefix to g or l, all subsequent commands will use this level as the “work” level.

Gnus will normally just activate (i.e., query the server about) groups on level gnus-activate-level or less. If you don’t want to activate unsubscribed groups, for instance, you might set this variable to 5. The default is 6.

3.7 Group Score

You would normally keep important groups on high levels, but that scheme is somewhat restrictive. Don’t you wish you could have Gnus sort the group buffer according to how often you read groups, perhaps? Within reason?

This is what group score is for. You can have Gnus assign a score to each group through the mechanism described below. You can then sort the group buffer based on this score. Alternatively, you can sort on score and then level. (Taken together, the level and the score is called the rank of the group. A group that is on level 4 and has a score of 1 has a higher rank than a group on level 5 that has a score of 300. (The level is the most significant part and the score is the least significant part.))

If you want groups you read often to get higher scores than groups you read seldom you can add the gnus-summary-bubble-group function to the gnus-summary-exit-hook hook. This will result (after sorting) in a bubbling sort of action. If you want to see that in action after each summary exit, you can add gnus-group-sort-groups-by-rank or gnus-group-sort-groups-by-score to the same hook, but that will slow things down somewhat.

3.8 Marking Groups

If you want to perform some command on several groups, and they appear subsequently in the group buffer, you would normally just give a numerical prefix to the command. Most group commands will then do your bidding on those groups.

However, if the groups are not in sequential order, you can still perform a command on several groups. You simply mark the groups first with the process mark and then execute the command.

# ¶

M m

Toggle the process mark for the current group (gnus-group-mark-group).
If gnus-process-mark-toggle is nil, set the process mark for the current group.

M-# ¶

M u

Remove the process mark, if any, from the current group (gnus-group-unmark-group).

M U ¶

Remove the process mark from all groups (gnus-group-unmark-all-groups).

M w ¶

Mark groups in region (gnus-group-mark-region).

M b ¶

Mark all groups in the buffer (gnus-group-mark-buffer).

M r ¶

Mark all groups that match some regular expression (gnus-group-mark-regexp).

Also see Process/Prefix.

If you want to execute some command on all groups that have been marked with the process mark, you can use the M-& (gnus-group-universal-argument) command. It will prompt you for the command to be executed.

3.9 Foreign Groups

If you recall how to subscribe to servers (see Finding the News) you will remember that gnus-secondary-select-methods and gnus-select-method let you write a definition in Emacs Lisp of what servers you want to see when you start up. The alternate approach is to use foreign servers and groups. “Foreign” here means they are not coming from the select methods. All foreign server configuration and subscriptions are stored only in the ~/.newsrc.eld file.

Below are some group mode commands for making and editing general foreign groups, as well as commands to ease the creation of a few special-purpose groups. All these commands insert the newly created groups under point—gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method is not consulted.

Changes from the group editing commands are stored in ~/.newsrc.eld (gnus-startup-file). An alternative is the variable gnus-parameters, See Group Parameters.

G m ¶

Make a new group (gnus-group-make-group). Gnus will prompt you for a name, a method and possibly an address. For an easier way to subscribe to NNTP groups (see Browse Foreign Server).

G M ¶

Make an ephemeral group (gnus-group-read-ephemeral-group). Gnus will prompt you for a name, a method and an address.

G r ¶

Rename the current group to something else (gnus-group-rename-group). This is valid only on some groups—mail groups mostly. This command might very well be quite slow on some back ends.

G c ¶

Customize the group parameters (gnus-group-customize).

G e ¶

Enter a buffer where you can edit the select method of the current group (gnus-group-edit-group-method).

G p ¶

Enter a buffer where you can edit the group parameters (gnus-group-edit-group-parameters).

G E ¶

Enter a buffer where you can edit the group info (gnus-group-edit-group).

G d ¶

Make a directory group (see Directory Groups). You will be prompted for the directory’s name (gnus-group-make-directory-group).

G h ¶

Make the Gnus help group (gnus-group-make-help-group).

G D ¶

Read an arbitrary directory as if it were a newsgroup with the nneething back end (gnus-group-enter-directory). See Anything Groups.

G f ¶

Make a group based on some file or other (gnus-group-make-doc-group). If you give a prefix to this command, you will be prompted for a file name and a file type. Currently supported types are mbox, babyl, digest, news, rnews, mmdf, forward, rfc934, rfc822-forward, mime-parts, standard-digest, slack-digest, clari-briefs, nsmail, outlook, oe-dbx, and mailman. If you run this command without a prefix, Gnus will guess at the file type. See Document Groups.

G u ¶

Create one of the groups mentioned in gnus-useful-groups (gnus-group-make-useful-group).

G w ¶

Make an ephemeral group based on a web search (gnus-group-make-web-group). If you give a prefix to this command, make a solid group instead. You will be prompted for the search engine type and the search string. Valid search engine types include google and dejanews. See Web Searches.

If you use the google search engine, you can limit the search to a particular group by using a match string like ‘shaving group:alt.sysadmin.recovery’.

G R ¶

Make a group based on an RSS feed (gnus-group-make-rss-group). You will be prompted for an URL. See RSS.

G DEL ¶

This function will delete the current group (gnus-group-delete-group). If given a prefix, this function will actually delete all the articles in the group, and forcibly remove the group itself from the face of the Earth. Use a prefix only if you are absolutely sure of what you are doing. This command can’t be used on read-only groups (like nntp groups), though.

G V ¶

Make a new, fresh, empty nnvirtual group (gnus-group-make-empty-virtual). See Virtual Groups.

G v ¶

Add the current group to an nnvirtual group (gnus-group-add-to-virtual). Uses the process/prefix convention.

See Select Methods, for more information on the various select methods.

If gnus-activate-foreign-newsgroups is a positive number, Gnus will check all foreign groups with this level or lower at startup. This might take quite a while, especially if you subscribe to lots of groups from different NNTP servers. Also see Group Levels; gnus-activate-level also affects activation of foreign newsgroups.

The following commands create ephemeral groups. They can be called not only from the Group buffer, but in any Gnus buffer.

gnus-read-ephemeral-emacs-bug-group ¶

Read an Emacs bug report in an ephemeral group. Gnus will prompt for multiple bug numbers. The default is the number at point. The URL template is specified in gnus-bug-group-download-format-alist.

gnus-read-ephemeral-debian-bug-group ¶

Read a Debian bug report in an ephemeral group. Analog to gnus-read-ephemeral-emacs-bug-group.

Some of these command are also useful for article buttons, See Article Buttons.

Here is an example:

(require 'gnus-art)
(add-to-list
 'gnus-button-alist
 '("#\\([0-9]+\\)\\>" 1
   (string-match "\\<emacs\\>" (or gnus-newsgroup-name ""))
   gnus-read-ephemeral-emacs-bug-group 1))

3.10 Group Parameters

The group parameters store information local to a particular group.

Use the G p or the G c command to edit group parameters of a group. (G p presents you with a Lisp-based interface, G c presents you with a Customize-like interface. The latter helps avoid silly Lisp errors.) You might also be interested in reading about topic parameters (see Topic Parameters). Additionally, you can set group parameters via the gnus-parameters variable, see below.

Here’s an example group parameter list:

((to-address . "ding@gnus.org")
 (auto-expire . t))

We see that each element consists of a “dotted pair”—the thing before the dot is the key, while the thing after the dot is the value. All the parameters have this form except local variable specs, which are not dotted pairs, but proper lists.

Some parameters have correspondent customizable variables, each of which is an alist of regexps and values.

The following group parameters can be used:

to-address ¶

Address used by when doing followups and new posts.

(to-address . "some@where.com")

This is primarily useful in mail groups that represent closed mailing lists—mailing lists where it’s expected that everybody that writes to the mailing list is subscribed to it. Since using this parameter ensures that the mail only goes to the mailing list itself, it means that members won’t receive two copies of your followups.

Using to-address will actually work whether the group is foreign or not. Let’s say there’s a group on the server that is called ‘fa.4ad-l’. This is a real newsgroup, but the server has gotten the articles from a mail-to-news gateway. Posting directly to this group is therefore impossible—you have to send mail to the mailing list address instead.

See also gnus-parameter-to-address-alist.

to-list ¶

Address used when doing a in that group.

(to-list . "some@where.com")

It is totally ignored when doing a followup—except that if it is present in a news group, you’ll get mail group semantics when doing f.

If you do an a command in a mail group and you have neither a to-list group parameter nor a to-address group parameter, then a to-list group parameter will be added automatically upon sending the message if gnus-add-to-list is set to t.

If this variable is set, gnus-mailing-list-mode is turned on when entering summary buffer.

subscribed ¶

If this parameter is set to t, Gnus will consider the to-address and to-list parameters for this group as addresses of mailing lists you are subscribed to. Giving Gnus this information is (only) a first step in getting it to generate correct Mail-Followup-To headers for your posts to these lists. The second step is to put the following in your .gnus.el

(setq message-subscribed-address-functions
      '(gnus-find-subscribed-addresses))

See Mailing Lists in The Message Manual, for a complete treatment of available MFT support.

visible ¶

If the group parameter list has the element (visible . t), that group will always be visible in the Group buffer, regardless of whether it has any unread articles.

This parameter cannot be set via gnus-parameters. See gnus-permanently-visible-groups as an alternative.

broken-reply-to ¶

Elements like (broken-reply-to . t) signals that Reply-To headers in this group are to be ignored, and for the header to be hidden if reply-to is part of gnus-boring-article-headers. This can be useful if you’re reading a mailing list group where the listserv has inserted Reply-To headers that point back to the listserv itself. That is broken behavior. So there!

to-group ¶

Elements like (to-group . "some.group.name") means that all posts in that group will be sent to some.group.name.

newsgroup ¶

If you have (newsgroup . t) in the group parameter list, Gnus will treat all responses as if they were responses to news articles. This can be useful if you have a mail group that’s really a mirror of a news group.

gcc-self ¶

If (gcc-self . t) is present in the group parameter list, newly composed messages will be gccd to the current group. If (gcc-self . none) is present, no Gcc: header will be generated, if (gcc-self . "group") is present, this string will be inserted literally as a Gcc: header. It should be a group name. The gcc-self value may also be a list of strings and t, e.g., (gcc-self "group1" "group2" t) means to gcc the newly composed message into the groups "group1" and "group2", and into the current group. The gcc-self parameter takes precedence over any default Gcc rules as described later (see Archived Messages), with the exception for messages to resend.

Caveat: Adding (gcc-self . t) to the parameter list of nntp groups (or the like) isn’t valid. An nntp server doesn’t accept articles.

auto-expire ¶

If the group parameter has an element that looks like (auto-expire . t), all articles read will be marked as expirable. For an alternative approach, see Expiring Mail.

See also gnus-auto-expirable-newsgroups.

total-expire ¶

If the group parameter has an element that looks like (total-expire . t), all read articles will be put through the expiry process, even if they are not marked as expirable. Use with caution. Unread, ticked and dormant articles are not eligible for expiry.

See also gnus-total-expirable-newsgroups.

expiry-wait ¶

If the group parameter has an element that looks like (expiry-wait . 10), this value will override any nnmail-expiry-wait and nnmail-expiry-wait-function settings (see Expiring Mail) when expiring expirable messages. The value can be either a number of days (not necessarily an integer), or one of the symbols never or immediate.

expiry-target ¶

Where expired messages end up. This parameter overrides nnmail-expiry-target.

score-file ¶

Elements that look like (score-file . "file") will make file into the current score file for the group in question. All interactive score entries will be put into this file.

adapt-file ¶

Elements that look like (adapt-file . "file") will make file into the current adaptive file for the group in question. All adaptive score entries will be put into this file.

admin-address ¶

When unsubscribing from a mailing list you should never send the unsubscription notice to the mailing list itself. Instead, you’d send messages to the administrative address. This parameter allows you to put the admin address somewhere convenient.

display ¶

Elements that look like (display . MODE) say which articles to display on entering the group. Valid values are:

all

Display all articles, both read and unread.

an integer

Display the last integer articles in the group. This is the same as entering the group with C-u integer.

default

Display the default visible articles, which normally includes unread and ticked articles.

an array

Display articles that satisfy a predicate.

Here are some examples:

[unread]

Display only unread articles.

[not expire]

Display everything except expirable articles.

[and (not reply) (not expire)]

Display everything except expirable and articles you’ve already responded to.

The available operators are not, and and or. Predicates include tick, unsend, undownload, unread, dormant, expire, reply, killed, bookmark, score, save, cache, forward, and unseen.

The display parameter works by limiting the summary buffer to the subset specified. You can pop the limit by using the / w command (see Limiting).

comment ¶

Elements that look like (comment . "This is a comment") are arbitrary comments on the group. You can display comments in the group line (see Group Line Specification).

charset ¶

Elements that look like (charset . iso-8859-1) will make iso-8859-1 the default charset; that is, the charset that will be used for all articles that do not specify a charset.

See also gnus-group-charset-alist.

ignored-charsets ¶

Elements that look like (ignored-charsets x-unknown iso-8859-1) will make iso-8859-1 and x-unknown ignored; that is, the default charset will be used for decoding articles.

See also gnus-group-ignored-charsets-alist.

posting-style ¶

You can store additional posting style information for this group here (see Posting Styles). The format is that of an entry in the gnus-posting-styles alist, except that there’s no regexp matching the group name (of course). Style elements in this group parameter will take precedence over the ones found in gnus-posting-styles.

For instance, if you want a funky name and signature in this group only, instead of hacking gnus-posting-styles, you could put something like this in the group parameters:

(posting-style
  (name "Funky Name")
  ("X-Message-SMTP-Method" "smtp smtp.example.org 587")
  ("X-My-Header" "Funky Value")
  (signature "Funky Signature"))

If you’re using topics to organize your group buffer (see Group Topics), note that posting styles can also be set in the topics parameters. Posting styles in topic parameters apply to all groups in this topic. More precisely, the posting-style settings for a group result from the hierarchical merging of all posting-style entries in the parameters of this group and all the topics it belongs to.

post-method ¶

If it is set, the value is used as the method for posting message instead of gnus-post-method.

mail-source ¶

If it is set, and the setting of mail-sources includes a group mail source (see Mail Sources), the value is a mail source for this group.

banner ¶

An item like (banner . regexp) causes any part of an article that matches the regular expression regexp to be stripped. Instead of regexp, you can also use the symbol signature which strips the last signature or any of the elements of the alist gnus-article-banner-alist.

sieve ¶

This parameter contains a Sieve test that should match incoming mail that should be placed in this group. From this group parameter, a Sieve ‘IF’ control structure is generated, having the test as the condition and ‘fileinto "group.name";’ as the body.

For example, if the ‘INBOX.list.sieve’ group has the (sieve address "sender" "sieve-admin@extundo.com") group parameter, when translating the group parameter into a Sieve script (see Sieve Commands) the following Sieve code is generated:

if address "sender" "sieve-admin@extundo.com" {
        fileinto "INBOX.list.sieve";
}

To generate tests for multiple email-addresses use a group parameter like (sieve address "sender" ("name@one.org" "else@two.org")). When generating a sieve script (see Sieve Commands) Sieve code like the following is generated:

if address "sender" ["name@one.org", "else@two.org"] {
        fileinto "INBOX.list.sieve";
}

You can also use regexp expansions in the rules:

(sieve header :regex "list-id" "<c++std-\\1.accu.org>")

See Sieve Commands, for commands and variables that might be of interest in relation to the sieve parameter.

The Sieve language is described in RFC 3028. See Top in Emacs Sieve.

match-list ¶

If this parameter is set to t and nnmail-split-method is set to gnus-group-split, Gnus will match to-address, to-list, extra-aliases and split-regexp against the list split abbreviation. The split regexp is modified to match either a @ or a dot . in mail addresses to conform to RFC2919 List-ID.

See nnmail-split-abbrev-alist for the regular expression matching mailing-list headers.

See Group Mail Splitting, for details on how to automatically split on group parameters.

(agent parameters)

If the agent has been enabled, you can set any of its parameters to control the behavior of the agent in individual groups. See Agent Parameters in Category Syntax. Most users will choose to set agent parameters in either an agent category or group topic to minimize the configuration effort.

(variable form)

You can use the group parameters to set variables local to the group you are entering. If you want to turn threading off in ‘news.answers’, you could put (gnus-show-threads nil) in the group parameters of that group. gnus-show-threads will be made into a local variable in the summary buffer you enter, and the form nil will be evaled there.

Note that this feature sets the variable locally to the summary buffer if and only if variable has been bound as a variable. Otherwise, only evaluating the form will take place. So, you may want to bind the variable in advance using defvar or other if the result of the form needs to be set to it.

But some variables are evaluated in the article buffer, or in the message buffer (of a reply or followup or otherwise newly created message). As a workaround, it might help to add the variable in question to gnus-newsgroup-variables. See Various Summary Stuff. So if you want to set message-from-style via the group parameters, then you may need the following statement elsewhere in your ~/.gnus.el file:

(add-to-list 'gnus-newsgroup-variables 'message-from-style)

A use for this feature is to remove a mailing list identifier tag in the subject fields of articles. E.g., if the news group

nntp+news.gnus.org:gmane.text.docbook.apps

has the tag ‘DOC-BOOK-APPS:’ in the subject of all articles, this tag can be removed from the article subjects in the summary buffer for the group by putting (gnus-list-identifiers "DOCBOOK-APPS:") into the group parameters for the group.

This can also be used as a group-specific hook function. If you want to hear a beep when you enter a group, you could put something like (dummy-variable (ding)) in the parameters of that group. If dummy-variable has been bound (see above), it will be set to the (meaningless) result of the (ding) form.

Alternatively, since the VARIABLE becomes local to the group, this pattern can be used to temporarily change a hook. For example, if the following is added to a group parameter

(gnus-summary-prepared-hook
  (lambda nil (local-set-key "d" (local-key-binding "n"))))

when the group is entered, the ’d’ key will not mark the article as expired.

Group parameters can be set via the gnus-parameters variable too. But some variables, such as visible, have no effect (For this case see gnus-permanently-visible-groups as an alternative.). For example:

(setq gnus-parameters
      '(("mail\\..*"
         (gnus-show-threads nil)
         (gnus-use-scoring nil)
         (gnus-summary-line-format
          "%U%R%z%I%(%[%d:%ub%-23,23f%]%) %s\n")
         (gcc-self . t)
         (display . all))

        ("^nnimap:\\(foo.bar\\)$"
         (to-group . "\\1"))

        ("mail\\.me"
         (gnus-use-scoring t))

        ("list\\..*"
         (total-expire . t)
         (broken-reply-to . t))))

All clauses that match the group name will be used, but the last setting “wins”. So if you have two clauses that both match the group name, and both set, say display, the last setting will override the first.

Parameters that are strings will be subjected to regexp substitution, as the to-group example shows.

By default, whether comparing the group name and one of those regexps specified in gnus-parameters is done in a case-sensitive manner or a case-insensitive manner depends on the value of case-fold-search at the time when the comparison is done. The value of case-fold-search is typically t; it means, for example, the element ("INBOX\\.FOO" (total-expire . t)) might be applied to both the ‘INBOX.FOO’ group and the ‘INBOX.foo’ group. If you want to make those regexps always case-sensitive, set the value of the gnus-parameters-case-fold-search variable to nil. Otherwise, set it to t if you want to compare them always in a case-insensitive manner.

You can define different sorting to different groups via gnus-parameters. Here is an example to sort an NNTP group by reverse date to see the latest news at the top and an RSS group by subject. In this example, the first group is the Debian daily news group gmane.linux.debian.user.news from news.gmane.io. The RSS group corresponds to the Debian weekly news RSS feed https://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main.en.rdf, See RSS.

(setq
 gnus-parameters
 '(("nntp.*gmane\\.debian\\.user\\.news"
    (gnus-show-threads nil)
    (gnus-article-sort-functions '((not gnus-article-sort-by-date)))
    (gnus-use-adaptive-scoring nil)
    (gnus-use-scoring nil))
   ("nnrss.*debian"
    (gnus-show-threads nil)
    (gnus-article-sort-functions 'gnus-article-sort-by-subject)
    (gnus-use-adaptive-scoring nil)
    (gnus-use-scoring t)
    (gnus-score-find-score-files-function 'gnus-score-find-single)
    (gnus-summary-line-format "%U%R%z%d %I%(%[ %s %]%)\n"))))

3.11 Listing Groups

These commands all list various slices of the groups available.

l ¶

A s

List all groups that have unread articles (gnus-group-list-groups). If the numeric prefix is used, this command will list only groups of level ARG and lower. By default, it only lists groups of level five (i.e., gnus-group-default-list-level) or lower (i.e., just subscribed groups).

L ¶

A u

List all groups, whether they have unread articles or not (gnus-group-list-all-groups). If the numeric prefix is used, this command will list only groups of level ARG and lower. By default, it lists groups of level seven or lower (i.e., just subscribed and unsubscribed groups).

A l ¶

List all unread groups on a specific level (gnus-group-list-level). If given a prefix, also list the groups with no unread articles.

A k ¶

List all killed groups (gnus-group-list-killed). If given a prefix argument, really list all groups that are available, but aren’t currently (un)subscribed. This could entail reading the active file from the server.

A z ¶

List all zombie groups (gnus-group-list-zombies).

A m ¶

List all unread, subscribed groups with names that match a regexp (gnus-group-list-matching).

A M ¶

List groups that match a regexp (gnus-group-list-all-matching).

A A ¶

List absolutely all groups in the active file(s) of the server(s) you are connected to (gnus-group-list-active). This might very well take quite a while. It might actually be a better idea to do a A M to list all matching, and just give ‘.’ as the thing to match on. Also note that this command may list groups that don’t exist (yet)—these will be listed as if they were killed groups. Take the output with some grains of salt.

A a ¶

List all groups that have names that match a regexp (gnus-group-apropos).

A d ¶

List all groups that have names or descriptions that match a regexp (gnus-group-description-apropos).

A c ¶

List all groups with cached articles (gnus-group-list-cached).

A ? ¶

List all groups with dormant articles (gnus-group-list-dormant).

A ! ¶

List all groups with ticked articles (gnus-group-list-ticked).

A / ¶

Further limit groups within the current selection (gnus-group-list-limit). If you’ve first limited to groups with dormant articles with A ?, you can then further limit with A / c, which will then limit to groups with cached articles, giving you the groups that have both dormant articles and cached articles.

A f ¶

Flush groups from the current selection (gnus-group-list-flush).

A p ¶

List groups plus the current selection (gnus-group-list-plus).

Groups that match the gnus-permanently-visible-groups regexp will always be shown, whether they have unread articles or not. You can also add the visible element to the group parameters in question to get the same effect.

Groups that have just ticked articles in it are normally listed in the group buffer. If gnus-list-groups-with-ticked-articles is nil, these groups will be treated just like totally empty groups. It is t by default.

3.12 Sorting Groups

The C-c C-s (gnus-group-sort-groups) command sorts the group buffer according to the function(s) given by the gnus-group-sort-function variable. Available sorting functions include:

gnus-group-sort-by-alphabet ¶

Sort the group names alphabetically. This is the default.

gnus-group-sort-by-real-name ¶

Sort the group alphabetically on the real (unprefixed) group names.

gnus-group-sort-by-level ¶

Sort by group level.

gnus-group-sort-by-score ¶

Sort by group score. See Group Score.

gnus-group-sort-by-rank ¶

Sort by group score and then the group level. The level and the score are, when taken together, the group’s rank. See Group Score.

gnus-group-sort-by-unread ¶

Sort by number of unread articles.

gnus-group-sort-by-method ¶

Sort alphabetically on the select method.

gnus-group-sort-by-server ¶

Sort alphabetically on the Gnus server name.

gnus-group-sort-function can also be a list of sorting functions. In that case, the most significant sort key function must be the last one.

There are also a number of commands for sorting directly according to some sorting criteria:

G S a ¶

Sort the group buffer alphabetically by group name (gnus-group-sort-groups-by-alphabet).

G S u ¶

Sort the group buffer by the number of unread articles (gnus-group-sort-groups-by-unread).

G S l ¶

Sort the group buffer by group level (gnus-group-sort-groups-by-level).

G S v ¶

Sort the group buffer by group score (gnus-group-sort-groups-by-score). See Group Score.

G S r ¶

Sort the group buffer by group rank (gnus-group-sort-groups-by-rank). See Group Score.

G S m ¶

Sort the group buffer alphabetically by back end name
(gnus-group-sort-groups-by-method).

G S n ¶

Sort the group buffer alphabetically by real (unprefixed) group name (gnus-group-sort-groups-by-real-name).

All the commands below obey the process/prefix convention (see Process/Prefix).

When given a symbolic prefix (see Symbolic Prefixes), all these commands will sort in reverse order.

You can also sort a subset of the groups:

G P a ¶

Sort the groups alphabetically by group name (gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-alphabet).

G P u ¶

Sort the groups by the number of unread articles (gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-unread).

G P l ¶

Sort the groups by group level (gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-level).

G P v ¶

Sort the groups by group score (gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-score). See Group Score.

G P r ¶

Sort the groups by group rank (gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-rank). See Group Score.

G P m ¶

Sort the groups alphabetically by back end name
(gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-method).

G P n ¶

Sort the groups alphabetically by real (unprefixed) group name (gnus-group-sort-selected-groups-by-real-name).

G P s ¶

Sort the groups according to gnus-group-sort-function.

And finally, note that you can use C-k and C-y to manually move groups around.

3.13 Group Maintenance

b ¶

Find bogus groups and delete them (gnus-group-check-bogus-groups).

F ¶

Find new groups and process them (gnus-group-find-new-groups). With 1 C-u, use the ask-server method to query the server for new groups. With 2 C-u’s, use most complete method possible to query the server for new groups, and subscribe the new groups as zombies.

C-c C-x ¶

Run all expirable articles in the current group through the expiry process (if any) (gnus-group-expire-articles). That is, delete all expirable articles in the group that have been around for a while. (see Expiring Mail).

C-c C-M-x ¶

Run all expirable articles in all groups through the expiry process (gnus-group-expire-all-groups).

3.14 Browse Foreign Server

B ¶

You will be queried for a select method and a server name. Gnus will then attempt to contact this server and let you browse the groups there (gnus-group-browse-foreign-server).

A new buffer with a list of available groups will appear. This buffer will use the gnus-browse-mode. This buffer looks a bit (well, a lot) like a normal group buffer.

Here’s a list of keystrokes available in the browse mode:

n ¶

Go to the next group (gnus-group-next-group).

p ¶

Go to the previous group (gnus-group-prev-group).

SPC ¶

Enter the current group and display the first article (gnus-browse-read-group).

RET ¶

Enter the current group (gnus-browse-select-group).

u ¶

Toggle subscription of the current group (gnus-browse-toggle-subscription). You can affect the way the new group is entered into the Group buffer using the variable gnus-browse-subscribe-newsgroup-method. See see Subscription Methods for available options.

l ¶

q

Exit browse mode (gnus-browse-exit).

d ¶

Describe the current group (gnus-browse-describe-group).

? ¶

Describe browse mode briefly (well, there’s not much to describe, is there) (gnus-browse-describe-briefly).

DEL ¶

This function will delete the current group (gnus-browse-delete-group). If given a prefix, this function will actually delete all the articles in the group, and forcibly remove the group itself from the face of the Earth. Use a prefix only if you are absolutely sure of what you are doing.

3.15 Exiting Gnus

Yes, Gnus is ex(c)iting.

z ¶

Suspend Gnus (gnus-group-suspend). This doesn’t really exit Gnus, but it kills all buffers except the Group buffer. I’m not sure why this is a gain, but then who am I to judge?

q ¶

Quit Gnus (gnus-group-exit).

Q ¶

Quit Gnus without saving the .newsrc files (gnus-group-quit). The dribble file will be saved, though (see Auto Save).

gnus-suspend-gnus-hook is called when you suspend Gnus and gnus-exit-gnus-hook is called when you quit Gnus, while gnus-after-exiting-gnus-hook is called as the final item when exiting Gnus.

3.16 Group Topics

If you read lots and lots of groups, it might be convenient to group them hierarchically according to topics. You put your Emacs groups over here, your sex groups over there, and the rest (what, two groups or so?) you put in some misc section that you never bother with anyway. You can even group the Emacs sex groups as a sub-topic to either the Emacs groups or the sex groups—or both! Go wild!

Here’s an example:

Gnus
  Emacs -- I wuw it!
     3: comp.emacs
     2: alt.religion.emacs
    Naughty Emacs
     452: alt.sex.emacs
       0: comp.talk.emacs.recovery
  Misc
     8: comp.binaries.fractals
    13: comp.sources.unix

To get this fab functionality you simply turn on (ooh!) the gnus-topic minor mode—type t in the group buffer. (This is a toggling command.)

Go ahead, just try it. I’ll still be here when you get back. La de dum… Nice tune, that… la la la… What, you’re back? Yes, and now press l. There. All your groups are now listed under ‘misc’. Doesn’t that make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Hot and bothered?

If you want this permanently enabled, you should add that minor mode to the hook for the group mode. Put the following line in your ~/.gnus.el file:

(add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)

• Topic Commands
• Topic Variables
• Topic Sorting
• Topic Topology
• Topic Parameters

(setq gnus-topic-display-predicate
      (lambda (name)
        (or (not (equal name "Work"))
            (< 090000
               (string-to-number (format-time-string "%H%M%S"))
               170000))))

Gnus
  Emacs -- I wuw it!
     3: comp.emacs
     2: alt.religion.emacs
    Naughty Emacs
     452: alt.sex.emacs
       0: comp.talk.emacs.recovery
  Misc
     8: comp.binaries.fractals
    13: comp.sources.unix

(("Gnus" visible)
 (("Emacs -- I wuw it!" visible)
  (("Naughty Emacs" visible)))
 (("Misc" visible)))

Gnus
  Emacs
     3: comp.emacs
     2: alt.religion.emacs
   452: alt.sex.emacs
    Relief
     452: alt.sex.emacs
       0: comp.talk.emacs.recovery
  Misc
     8: comp.binaries.fractals
    13: comp.sources.unix
   452: alt.sex.emacs

3.17 Accessing groups of non-English names

There are some news servers that provide groups of which the names are expressed with their native languages in the world. For instance, in a certain news server there are some newsgroups of which the names are spelled in Chinese, where people are talking in Chinese. You can, of course, subscribe to such news groups using Gnus. Currently Gnus supports non-ASCII group names not only with the nntp back end but also with the nnml back end and the nnrss back end.

Every such group name is encoded by a certain charset in the server side (in an NNTP server its administrator determines the charset, but for groups in the other back ends it is determined by you). Gnus has to display the decoded ones for you in the group buffer and the article buffer, and needs to use the encoded ones when communicating with servers. However, Gnus doesn’t know what charset is used for each non-ASCII group name. The following two variables are just the ones for telling Gnus what charset should be used for each group:

gnus-group-name-charset-method-alist ¶

An alist of select methods and charsets. The default value is nil. The names of groups in the server specified by that select method are all supposed to use the corresponding charset. For example:

(setq gnus-group-name-charset-method-alist
      '(((nntp "news.com.cn") . cn-gb-2312)))

Charsets specified for groups with this variable are preferred to the ones specified for the same groups with the gnus-group-name-charset-group-alist variable (see below).

A select method can be very long, like:

(nntp "gmane"
      (nntp-address "news.gmane.io")
      (nntp-end-of-line "\n")
      (nntp-open-connection-function
       nntp-open-via-rlogin-and-telnet)
      (nntp-via-rlogin-command "ssh")
      (nntp-via-rlogin-command-switches
       ("-C" "-t" "-e" "none"))
      (nntp-via-address …))

In that case, you can truncate it into (nntp "gmane") in this variable. That is, it is enough to contain only the back end name and the server name.

gnus-group-name-charset-group-alist ¶

An alist of regexp of group name and the charset for group names. ((".*" . utf-8)) is the default value if UTF-8 is supported, otherwise the default is nil. For example:

(setq gnus-group-name-charset-group-alist
      '(("\\.com\\.cn:" . cn-gb-2312)
        (".*" . utf-8)))

Note that this variable is ignored if the match is made with gnus-group-name-charset-method-alist.

Those two variables are used also to determine the charset for encoding and decoding non-ASCII group names that are in the back ends other than nntp. It means that it is you who determine it. If you do nothing, the charset used for group names in those back ends will all be utf-8 because of the last element of gnus-group-name-charset-group-alist.

There is one more important variable for non-ASCII group names:

nnmail-pathname-coding-system ¶

The value of this variable should be a coding system or nil. The default is nil in Emacs.

The nnml back end, the nnrss back end, the agent, and the cache use non-ASCII group names in those files and directories. This variable overrides the value of file-name-coding-system which specifies the coding system used when encoding and decoding those file names and directory names.

Emacs uses the value of default-file-name-coding-system if file-name-coding-system is nil or it is bound to the value of nnmail-pathname-coding-system which is nil.

Normally the value of default-file-name-coding-system is initialized according to the locale, so you will need to do nothing if the value is suitable to encode and decode non-ASCII group names.

The value of this variable (or default-file-name-coding-system) does not necessarily need to be the same value that is determined by gnus-group-name-charset-method-alist and gnus-group-name-charset-group-alist.

If default-file-name-coding-system or this variable is initialized by default to iso-latin-1-unix for example, although you want to subscribe to the groups spelled in Chinese, that is the most typical case where you have to customize nnmail-pathname-coding-system. The utf-8-unix coding system is a good candidate for it. Otherwise, you may change the locale in your system so that default-file-name-coding-system or this variable may be initialized to an appropriate value.

Note that when you copy or move articles from a non-ASCII group to another group, the charset used to encode and decode group names should be the same in both groups. Otherwise the Newsgroups header will be displayed incorrectly in the article buffer.

3.18 Misc Group Stuff

v ¶

The key v is reserved for users. You can bind it to some command or better use it as a prefix key. For example:

(define-key gnus-group-mode-map (kbd "v j d")
  (lambda ()
    (interactive)
    (gnus-group-jump-to-group "nndraft:drafts")))

On keys reserved for users in Emacs and on key bindings in general See Keymaps in The Emacs Editor.

^ ¶

Enter the server buffer (gnus-group-enter-server-mode). See Server Buffer.

a ¶

Start composing a message (a news by default) (gnus-group-post-news). If given a prefix, post to the group under the point. If the prefix is 1, prompt for a group to post to. Contrary to what the name of this function suggests, the prepared article might be a mail instead of a news, if a mail group is specified with the prefix argument. See Composing Messages.

m ¶

Mail a message somewhere (gnus-group-mail). If given a prefix, use the posting style of the group under the point. If the prefix is 1, prompt for a group name to find the posting style. See Composing Messages.

i ¶

Start composing a news (gnus-group-news). If given a prefix, post to the group under the point. If the prefix is 1, prompt for group to post to. See Composing Messages.

This function actually prepares a news even when using mail groups. This is useful for “posting” messages to mail groups without actually sending them over the network: they’re just saved directly to the group in question. The corresponding back end must have a request-post method for this to work though.

G z ¶

Compact the group under point (gnus-group-compact-group). Currently implemented only in nnml (see Mail Spool). This removes gaps between article numbers, hence getting a correct total article count.

Variables for the group buffer:

gnus-group-mode-hook ¶

is called after the group buffer has been created.

gnus-group-prepare-hook ¶

is called after the group buffer is generated. It may be used to modify the buffer in some strange, unnatural way.

gnus-group-prepared-hook ¶

is called as the very last thing after the group buffer has been generated. It may be used to move point around, for instance.

gnus-permanently-visible-groups ¶

Groups matching this regexp will always be listed in the group buffer, whether they are empty or not.

• Scanning New Messages
• Group Information
• Group Timestamp
• File Commands
• Sieve Commands

(add-hook 'gnus-select-group-hook 'gnus-group-set-timestamp)

(setq gnus-group-line-format
      "%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %d\n")

*        0: mail.ding                                19961002T012943
         0: custom                                   19961002T012713

(setq gnus-group-line-format
      "%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %6,6~(cut 2)d\n")

(setq gnus-group-line-format
      "%M\%S\%p\%P\%5y: %(%-40,40g%) %ud\n")
(defun gnus-user-format-function-d (headers)
  (let ((time (gnus-group-timestamp gnus-tmp-group)))
    (if time
        (format-time-string "%b %d  %H:%M" time)
      "")))

if address "sender" "owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu" {
        fileinto "INBOX.ding";
        stop;
}

4.1 Summary Buffer Format

Gnus will use the value of the gnus-extract-address-components variable as a function for getting the name and address parts of a From header. Two pre-defined functions exist: gnus-extract-address-components, which is the default, quite fast, and too simplistic solution; and mail-extract-address-components, which works very nicely, but is slower. The default function will return the wrong answer in 5% of the cases. If this is unacceptable to you, use the other function instead:

(setq gnus-extract-address-components
      'mail-extract-address-components)

gnus-summary-same-subject is a string indicating that the current article has the same subject as the previous. This string will be used with those specs that require it. The default is "".

• Summary Buffer Lines
• To From Newsgroups
• Summary Buffer Mode Line
• Summary Highlighting

(setq gnus-extra-headers
      '(To Newsgroups))
(setq nnmail-extra-headers gnus-extra-headers)
(setq gnus-summary-line-format
      "%U%R%z%I%(%[%4L: %-23,23f%]%) %s\n")
(setq gnus-ignored-from-addresses
      "Your Name Here")

Newsgroups:full

(setq nntp-nov-is-evil t
      gnus-nov-is-evil t)

4.2 Summary Maneuvering

All the straight movement commands understand the numeric prefix and behave pretty much as you’d expect.

None of these commands select articles.

G M-n ¶

M-n

Go to the next summary line of an unread article (gnus-summary-next-unread-subject).

G M-p ¶

M-p

Go to the previous summary line of an unread article (gnus-summary-prev-unread-subject).

G g ¶

Ask for an article number and then go to the summary line of that article without displaying the article (gnus-summary-goto-subject).

If Gnus asks you to press a key to confirm going to the next group, you can use the C-n and C-p keys to move around the group buffer, searching for the next group to read without actually returning to the group buffer.

Variables related to summary movement:

gnus-auto-select-next

If you issue one of the movement commands (like n) and there are no more unread articles after the current one, Gnus will offer to go to the next group. If this variable is t and the next group is empty, Gnus will exit summary mode and return to the group buffer. If this variable is neither t nor nil, Gnus will select the next group with unread articles. As a special case, if this variable is quietly, Gnus will select the next group without asking for confirmation. If this variable is almost-quietly, the same will happen only if you are located on the last article in the group. Finally, if this variable is slightly-quietly, the Z n command will go to the next group without confirmation. Also see Group Levels.

gnus-auto-select-same ¶

If non-nil, all the movement commands will try to go to the next article with the same subject as the current. (Same here might mean roughly equal. See gnus-summary-gather-subject-limit for details (see Customizing Threading).) If there are no more articles with the same subject, go to the first unread article.

This variable is not particularly useful if you use a threaded display.

gnus-paging-select-next ¶

Control whether to select the next/previous article when paging (with commands like SPC or DEL). If non-nil, select the next article when reaching the end of the article (or the previous article when paging backwards).

If nil, don’t do anything at the end/start of the articles.

gnus-summary-check-current ¶

If non-nil, all the “unread” movement commands will not proceed to the next (or previous) article if the current article is unread. Instead, they will choose the current article.

gnus-auto-center-summary ¶

If non-nil, Gnus will keep the point in the summary buffer centered at all times. This makes things quite tidy, but if you have a slow network connection, or simply do not like this un-Emacsism, you can set this variable to nil to get the normal Emacs scrolling action. This will also inhibit horizontal re-centering of the summary buffer, which might make it more inconvenient to read extremely long threads.

This variable can also be a number. In that case, center the window at the given number of lines from the top.

gnus-summary-stop-at-end-of-message ¶

If non-nil, don’t go to the next article when hitting SPC, and you’re at the end of the article.

4.3 Choosing Articles

• Choosing Commands
• Choosing Variables

4.4 Scrolling the Article

SPC ¶

Pressing SPC will scroll the current article forward one page, or, if you have come to the end of the current article, will choose the next article (gnus-summary-next-page).

If gnus-article-skip-boring is non-nil and the rest of the article consists only of citations and signature, then it will be skipped; the next article will be shown instead. You can customize what is considered uninteresting with gnus-article-boring-faces. You can manually view the article’s pages, no matter how boring, using C-M-v.

DEL ¶

Scroll the current article back one page (gnus-summary-prev-page).

RET ¶

Scroll the current article one line forward (gnus-summary-scroll-up).

M-RET ¶

Scroll the current article one line backward (gnus-summary-scroll-down).

A g ¶

g

(Re)fetch the current article (gnus-summary-show-article). If given a prefix, show a completely “raw” article, just the way it came from the server. If given a prefix twice (i.e., C-u C-u g'), fetch the current article, but don’t run any of the article treatment functions.

If given a numerical prefix, you can do semi-manual charset stuff. C-u 0 g cn-gb-2312 RET will decode the message as if it were encoded in the cn-gb-2312 charset. If you have

(setq gnus-summary-show-article-charset-alist
      '((1 . cn-gb-2312)
        (2 . big5)))

then you can say C-u 1 g to get the same effect.

A < ¶

<

Scroll to the beginning of the article (gnus-summary-beginning-of-article).

A > ¶

>

Scroll to the end of the article (gnus-summary-end-of-article).

A s ¶

s

Perform an isearch in the article buffer (gnus-summary-isearch-article).

h ¶

Select the article buffer (gnus-summary-select-article-buffer).

4.5 Reply, Followup and Post

• Summary Mail Commands
• Summary Post Commands
• Summary Message Commands
• Canceling Articles

4.6 Delayed Articles

Sometimes, you might wish to delay the sending of a message. For example, you might wish to arrange for a message to turn up just in time to remind your about the birthday of your Significant Other. For this, there is the gnus-delay package. Setup is simple:

(gnus-delay-initialize)

Normally, to send a message you use the C-c C-c command from Message mode. To delay a message, use C-c C-j (gnus-delay-article) instead. This will ask you for how long the message should be delayed. Possible answers are:

• A time span. Consists of an integer and a letter. For example, 42d means to delay for 42 days. Available letters are m (minutes), h (hours), d (days), w (weeks), M (months) and Y (years).
• A specific date. Looks like YYYY-MM-DD. The message will be delayed until that day, at a specific time (eight o’clock by default). See also gnus-delay-default-hour.
• A specific time of day. Given in hh:mm format, 24h, no am/pm stuff. The deadline will be at that time today, except if that time has already passed, then it’s at the given time tomorrow. So if it’s ten o’clock in the morning and you specify 11:15, then the deadline is one hour and fifteen minutes hence. But if you specify 9:20, that means a time tomorrow.

The action of the gnus-delay-article command is influenced by a couple of variables:

gnus-delay-default-hour ¶

When you specify a specific date, the message will be due on that hour on the given date. Possible values are integers 0 through 23.

gnus-delay-default-delay ¶

This is a string and gives the default delay. It can be of any of the formats described above.

gnus-delay-group ¶

Delayed articles will be kept in this group on the drafts server until they are due. You probably don’t need to change this. The default value is "delayed".

gnus-delay-header ¶

The deadline for each article will be stored in a header. This variable is a string and gives the header name. You probably don’t need to change this. The default value is "X-Gnus-Delayed".

The way delaying works is like this: when you use the gnus-delay-article command, you give a certain delay. Gnus calculates the deadline of the message and stores it in the X-Gnus-Delayed header and puts the message in the nndraft:delayed group.

And whenever you get new news, Gnus looks through the group for articles which are due and sends them. It uses the gnus-delay-send-queue function for this. By default, this function is added to the hook gnus-get-new-news-hook. But of course, you can change this. Maybe you want to use the demon to send drafts? Just tell the demon to execute the gnus-delay-send-queue function.

gnus-delay-initialize ¶

By default, this function installs gnus-delay-send-queue in gnus-get-new-news-hook. But it accepts the optional second argument no-check. If it is non-nil, gnus-get-new-news-hook is not changed. The optional first argument is ignored.

For example, (gnus-delay-initialize nil t) means to do nothing. Presumably, you want to use the demon for sending due delayed articles. Just don’t forget to set that up :-)

When delaying an article with C-c C-j, Message mode will automatically add a "Date" header with the current time. In many cases you probably want the "Date" header to reflect the time the message is sent instead. To do this, you have to delete Date from message-draft-headers.

4.7 Marking Articles

There are several marks you can set on an article.

You have marks that decide the readedness (whoo, neato-keano neologism ohoy!) of the article. Alphabetic marks generally mean read, while non-alphabetic characters generally mean unread.

In addition, you also have marks that do not affect readedness.

• Unread Articles
• Read Articles
• Other Marks
• Setting Marks
• Generic Marking Commands
• Setting Process Marks

(add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'my-alter-summary-map)
(defun my-alter-summary-map ()
  (local-set-key "!" 'gnus-summary-put-mark-as-ticked-next))

(defun my-alter-summary-map ()
  (local-set-key "!" "MM!n"))

4.8 Limiting

It can be convenient to limit the summary buffer to just show some subset of the articles currently in the group. The effect most limit commands have is to remove a few (or many) articles from the summary buffer.

Limiting commands work on subsets of the articles already fetched from the servers. These commands don’t query the server for additional articles.

/ / ¶

/ s

Limit the summary buffer to articles that match some subject (gnus-summary-limit-to-subject). If given a prefix, exclude matching articles.

/ a ¶

Limit the summary buffer to articles that match some author (gnus-summary-limit-to-author). If given a prefix, exclude matching articles.

/ R ¶

Limit the summary buffer to articles that match some recipient (gnus-summary-limit-to-recipient). If given a prefix, exclude matching articles.

/ A ¶

Limit the summary buffer to articles in which contents of From, To or Cc header match a given address (gnus-summary-limit-to-address). If given a prefix, exclude matching articles.

/ S ¶

Limit the summary buffer to articles that aren’t part of any displayed threads (gnus-summary-limit-to-singletons). If given a prefix, limit to articles that are part of displayed threads.

/ x ¶

Limit the summary buffer to articles that match one of the “extra” headers (see To From Newsgroups) (gnus-summary-limit-to-extra). If given a prefix, exclude matching articles.

/ u ¶

x

Limit the summary buffer to articles not marked as read (gnus-summary-limit-to-unread). If given a prefix, limit the buffer to articles strictly unread. This means that ticked and dormant articles will also be excluded.

/ m ¶

Ask for a mark and then limit to all articles that have been marked with that mark (gnus-summary-limit-to-marks).

/ t ¶

Ask for a number and then limit the summary buffer to articles older than (or equal to) that number of days (gnus-summary-limit-to-age). If given a prefix, limit to articles younger than that number of days.

/ n ¶

With prefix ‘n’, limit the summary buffer to the next ‘n’ articles. If not given a prefix, use the process marked articles instead. (gnus-summary-limit-to-articles).

/ w ¶

Pop the previous limit off the stack and restore it (gnus-summary-pop-limit). If given a prefix, pop all limits off the stack.

/ . ¶

Limit the summary buffer to the unseen articles (gnus-summary-limit-to-unseen).

/ v ¶

Limit the summary buffer to articles that have a score at or above some score (gnus-summary-limit-to-score). If given a prefix, below some score.

/ p ¶

Limit the summary buffer to articles that satisfy the display group parameter predicate (gnus-summary-limit-to-display-predicate). See Group Parameters, for more on this predicate.

/ r ¶

Limit the summary buffer to replied articles (gnus-summary-limit-to-replied). If given a prefix, exclude replied articles.

/ E ¶

M S

Include all expunged articles in the limit (gnus-summary-limit-include-expunged).

/ D ¶

Include all dormant articles in the limit (gnus-summary-limit-include-dormant).

/ * ¶

Include all cached articles in the limit (gnus-summary-limit-include-cached).

/ d ¶

Exclude all dormant articles from the limit (gnus-summary-limit-exclude-dormant).

/ M ¶

Exclude all marked articles (gnus-summary-limit-exclude-marks).

/ T ¶

Include all the articles in the current thread in the limit.

/ c ¶

Exclude all dormant articles that have no children from the limit
(gnus-summary-limit-exclude-childless-dormant).

/ C ¶

Mark all excluded unread articles as read (gnus-summary-limit-mark-excluded-as-read). If given a prefix, also mark excluded ticked and dormant articles as read.

/ b ¶

Limit the summary buffer to articles that have bodies that match a certain regexp (gnus-summary-limit-to-bodies). If given a prefix, reverse the limit. This command is quite slow since it requires selecting each article to find the matches.

/ h ¶

Like the previous command, only limit to headers instead (gnus-summary-limit-to-headers).

The following commands aren’t limiting commands, but use the / prefix as well.

/ N ¶

Insert all new articles in the summary buffer. It scans for new emails if back-end-get-new-mail is non-nil.

/ o ¶

Insert all old articles in the summary buffer. If given a numbered prefix, fetch this number of articles.

4.9 Threading

Gnus threads articles by default. To thread is to put responses to articles directly after the articles they respond to—in a hierarchical fashion.

Threading is done by looking at the References headers of the articles. In a perfect world, this would be enough to build pretty trees, but unfortunately, the References header is often broken or simply missing. Weird news propagation exacerbates the problem, so one has to employ other heuristics to get pleasing results. A plethora of approaches exists, as detailed in horrible detail in Customizing Threading.

First, a quick overview of the concepts:

root

The top-most article in a thread; the first article in the thread.

thread

A tree-like article structure.

sub-thread

A small(er) section of this tree-like structure.

loose threads

Threads often lose their roots due to article expiry, or due to the root already having been read in a previous session, and not displayed in the summary buffer. We then typically have many sub-threads that really belong to one thread, but are without connecting roots. These are called loose threads.

thread gathering

An attempt to gather loose threads into bigger threads.

sparse threads

A thread where the missing articles have been “guessed” at, and are displayed as empty lines in the summary buffer.

• Customizing Threading
• Thread Commands