Go to the previous, next section.
A line for each article is displayed in the summary buffer. You can move around, read articles, post articles and reply to articles.
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 function 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.
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 `'.
You can change the format of the lines in the summary buffer by changing
the gnus-summary-line-format variable. It works along the same
lines a a normal format string, with some extensions.
The default string is `%U%R%z%I%(%[%4L: %-20,20n%]%) %s\n'.
The following format specification characters are understood:
gnus-summary-same-subject
otherwise.
From line.
From header).
From header). This differs from the n
spec in that it uses gnus-extract-address-components, which is
slower, but may be more thorough.
From header). This works the same way as
the a spec.
gnus-summary-default-level and the score is less than
gnus-summary-zcore-fuzz, this spec will not be used.
Xref.
Date.
Message-ID.
References.
gnus-user-format-function-`X', where `X' is the letter
following `%u'. The function will be passed the current header as
argument. The function should return a string, which will be inserted
into the summary just like information from any other summary specifier.
The `%U' (status), `%R' (replied) and `%z' (zcore) specs have to be handled with care. For reasons of efficiency, Gnus will compute what column these characters will end up in, and "hard-code" that. This means that it is illegal to have these specs after a variable-length spec. Well, you might not be arrested, but your summary buffer will look strange, which is bad enough.
The smart choice is to have these specs as far to the left as possible. (Isn't that the case with everything, though? But I digress.)
This restriction may disappear in later versions of Gnus.
You can also change the format of the summary mode bar. Set
gnus-summary-mode-line-format to whatever you like. Here are the
elements you can play with:
gnus-visual-mark-article-hook
gnus-visual is nil.
gnus-summary-update-hook
gnus-visual is nil.
gnus-summary-selected-face
gnus-summary-highlight
(FORM . FACE). If you
would, for instance, like ticked articles to be italic and high-scored
articles to be bold, you could set this variable to something like
(((eq mark gnus-ticked-mark) . italic) ((> score default) . bold))As you may have guessed, if FORM returns a non-
nil value,
FACE will be applied to the line.
All the straight movement commands understand the numeric prefix and behave pretty much as you'd expect.
None of these commands select articles.
gnus-summary-next-unread-subject).
gnus-summary-prev-unread-subject).
gnus-summary-goto-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
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, no matter whether it has
any unread articles or not. 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 section Group Levels.
gnus-auto-select-same
nil, all the movement commands will try to go to the next
article with the same subject as the current. This variable is not
particularly useful if you use a threaded display.
gnus-summary-check-current
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
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.
None of the following movement commands understand the numeric prefix, and they all select and display an article.
gnus-summary-next-page).
gnus-summary-next-unread-article).
gnus-summary-prev-unread-article).
gnus-summary-next-article).
gnus-summary-prev-article).
gnus-summary-next-same-subject).
gnus-summary-prev-same-subject).
gnus-summary-first-unread-article).
gnus-summary-best-unread-article).
gnus-summary-goto-last-article).
gnus-summary-pop-article). This command differs from the
command above in that you can pop as many previous articles off the
history as you like.
Some variables that are relevant for moving and selecting articles:
gnus-auto-extend-newsgroup
nil. Gnus will then fetch the article from
the server and display it in the article buffer.
gnus-select-article-hook
gnus-mark-article-hook
gnus-summary-mark-read-and-unread-as-read, and will change the
mark of almost any article you read to gnus-unread-mark. The
only articles not affected by this function are ticked, dormant, and
expirable articles. If you'd instead like to just have unread articles
marked as read, you can use gnus-summary-mark-unread-as-read
instead. It will leave marks like gnus-low-score-mark,
gnus-del-mark (and so on) alone.
gnus-summary-next-page).
gnus-summary-prev-page).
gnus-summary-scroll-up).
gnus-summary-show-article). If
given a prefix, fetch the current article, but don't run any of the
article treatment functions. This will give you a "raw" article, just
the way it came from the server.
gnus-summary-beginning-of-article).
gnus-summary-end-of-article).
gnus-summary-isearch-article).
Commands for composing a mail message:
gnus-summary-reply).
gnus-summary-reply-with-original). This
command uses the process/prefix convention.
gnus-summary-mail-forward).
gnus-summary-post-forward).
gnus-summary-mail-other-window).
gnus-summary-resend-bounced-mail). You
will be popped into a mail buffer where you can edit the headers before
sending the mail off again. If you give a prefix to this command, and
the bounced mail is a reply to some other mail, Gnus will try to fetch
that mail and display it for easy perusal of its headers. This might
very well fail, though.
gnus-summary-resend-message will prompt you for an address to
send the current message off to, and then send it to that place. The
headers of the message won't be altered--but lots of headers that say
Resent-To, Resent-From and so on will be added. This
means that you actually send a mail to someone that has a To
header that (probably) points to yourself. This will confuse people.
So, natcherly you'll only do that if you're really eVIl.
This command is mainly used if you have several accounts and want to
ship a mail to a different account of yours. (If you're both
root and postmaster and get a mail for postmaster
to the root account, you may want to resend it to
postmaster. Ordnung muss sein!
gnus-uu-digest-mail-forward). This command uses the
process/prefix convention (see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-uu-digest-mail-forward).
Commands for posting an article:
gnus-summary-post-news).
gnus-summary-followup).
gnus-summary-followup-with-original). This command uses the
process/prefix convention.
gnus-uu-post-news). (see section Uuencoding and Posting).
Have you ever written something, and then decided that you really, really, really wish you hadn't posted that?
Well, you can't cancel mail, but you can cancel posts.
Find the article you wish to cancel (you can only cancel your own
articles, so don't try any funny stuff). Then press C or S
c (gnus-summary-cancel-article). Your article will be
canceled--machines all over the world will be deleting your article.
Be aware, however, that not all sites honor cancels, so your article may live on here and there, while most sites will delete the article in question.
If you discover that you have made some mistakes and want to do some corrections, you can post a superseding article that will replace your original article.
Go to the original article and press S s
(gnus-summary-supersede-article). You will be put in a buffer
where you can edit the article all you want before sending it off the
usual way.
The same goes for superseding as for canceling, only more so: Some sites do not honor superseding. On those sites, it will appear that you have posted almost the same article twice.
If you have just posted the article, and change your mind right away,
there is a trick you can use to cancel/supersede the article without
waiting for the article to appear on your site first. You simply return
to the post buffer (which is called *post-buf*). There you will
find the article you just posted, with all the headers intact. Change
the Message-ID header to a Cancel or Supersedes
header by substituting one of those words for Message-ID. Then
just press C-c C-c to send the article as you would do normally.
The previous article will be canceled/superseded.
Just remember, kids: There is no 'c' in 'supersede'.
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.
The following marks mark articles as unread, in one form or other.
gnus-ticked-mark) in the first column.
gnus-dormant-mark), and will only appear in the summary buffer
if there are followups to it.
gnus-unread-mark). These are articles that haven't been read at
all yet.
All the following marks mark articles as read.
gnus-del-mark) in the first column. These are articles that the
user has marked as read more or less manually.
gnus-read-mark).
gnus-ancient-mark).
gnus-killed-mark).
gnus-kill-file-mark).
gnus-low-score-mark).
gnus-catchup-mark).
gnus-canceled-mark)
gnus-souped-mark).
gnus-sparse-mark).
All these marks just mean that the article is marked as read, really. They are interpreted differently by the adaptive scoring scheme, however.
One more special mark, though:
gnus-expirable-mark).
There are some marks that have nothing to do with whether the article is read or not.
gnus-replied-mark).
gnus-cached-mark).
gnus-saved-mark.
gnus-not-empty-thread-mark and
gnus-empty-thread-mark in the third column, respectively.
gnus-process-mark. A
variety of commands react to the presence of the process mark. For
instance, X u (gnus-uu-decode-uu) will uudecode and view
all articles that have been marked with the process mark. Articles
marked with the process mark have a `#' in the second column.
You might have noticed that most of these "non-readedness" marks appear in the second column by default. So if you have a cached, saved, replied article that you have process-marked, what will that look like?
Nothing much. The precedence rules go as follows: process -> cache -> replied -> saved. So if the article is in the cache and is replied, you'll only see the cache mark and not the replied mark.
All the marking commands understand the numeric prefix.
gnus-summary-tick-article-forward).
gnus-summary-mark-as-dormant).
gnus-summary-mark-as-read-forward).
gnus-summary-kill-same-subject-and-select).
gnus-summary-kill-same-subject).
gnus-summary-catchup).
gnus-summary-catchup-all).
gnus-summary-catchup-to-here).
gnus-summary-mark-region-as-read).
gnus-summary-kill-below).
gnus-summary-clear-mark-forward).
gnus-summary-mark-as-expirable).
gnus-summary-set-bookmark).
gnus-summary-remove-bookmark).
gnus-summary-clear-above).
gnus-summary-tick-above).
gnus-summary-clear-above).
The gnus-summary-goto-unread variable controls what action should
be taken after setting a mark. If non-nil, point will move to
the next/previous unread article. If nil, point will just move
one line up or down. As a special case, if this variable is
never, all the marking commands as well as other commands (like
SPACE) will move to the next article, whether it is unread or not.
The default is t.
gnus-summary-mark-as-processable).
gnus-summary-unmark-as-processable).
gnus-summary-unmark-all-processable).
gnus-uu-mark-by-regexp).
gnus-uu-mark-region).
gnus-uu-mark-thread).
gnus-uu-unmark-thread).
gnus-uu-mark-over).
gnus-uu-mark-series).
gnus-uu-mark-sparse).
gnus-uu-mark-series).
gnus-uu-mark-buffer).
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.
gnus-summary-limit-to-subject).
gnus-summary-limit-to-author).
gnus-summary-limit-to-unread). If given a prefix, limit the
buffer to articles that are strictly unread. This means that ticked and
dormant articles will also be excluded.
gnus-summary-limit-to-marks).
gnus-summary-limit-to-articles). Uses the process/prefix
convention (see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-pop-limit). If given a prefix, pop all limits off
the stack.
gnus-summary-limit-to-score).
gnus-summary-limit-include-expunged).
gnus-summary-limit-include-dormant).
gnus-summary-limit-exclude-dormant).
gnus-summary-limit-exclude-childless-dormant).
gnus-summary-limit-mark-excluded-as-read). If given a prefix,
also mark excluded ticked and dormant articles as read.
Gnus threads articles by default. To thread is to put replies to articles directly after the articles they reply to--in a hierarchical fashion.
gnus-show-threads
nil, no threading will be done, and all of
the rest of the variables here will have no effect. Turning threading
off will speed group selection up a bit, but it is sure to make reading
slower and more awkward.
gnus-fetch-old-headers
nil, Gnus will attempt to build old threads by fetching
more old headers--headers to articles that are marked as read. If you
would like to display as few summary lines as possible, but still
connect as many loose threads as possible, you should set this variable
to some or a number. If you set it to a number, no more than
that number of extra old headers will be fetched. In either case,
fetching old headers only works if the backend you are using carries
overview files--this would normally be nntp, nnspool and
nnml. Also remember that if the root of the thread has been
expired by the server, there's not much Gnus can do about that.
gnus-build-sparse-threads
some. Gnus will then look at
the complete References headers of all articles and try to string
articles that belong in the same thread together. This will leave
gaps in the threading display where Gnus guesses that an article
is missing from the thread. (These gaps appear like normal summary
lines. If you select a gap, Gnus will try to fetch the article in
question.) If this variable is t, Gnus will display all these
"gaps" without regard for whether they are useful for completing the
thread or not. Finally, if this variable is more, Gnus won't cut
off sparse leaf nodes that don't lead anywhere. This variable is
nil by default.
gnus-summary-gather-subject-limit
nil, Gnus requires an exact match between the
subjects of the loose threads before gathering them into one big
super-thread. This might be too strict a requirement, what with the
presence of stupid newsreaders that chop off long subjects lines. If
you think so, set this variable to, say, 20 to require that only the
first 20 characters of the subjects have to match. If you set this
variable to a really low number, you'll find that Gnus will gather
everything in sight into one thread, which isn't very helpful.
If you set this variable to the special value fuzzy, Gnus will
use a fuzzy string comparison algorithm on the subjects.
gnus-simplify-subject-fuzzy-regexp
gnus-simplify-ignored-prefixes
gnus-summary-gather-subject-limit to something as low
as 10, you might consider setting this variable to something sensible:
(setq gnus-simplify-ignored-prefixes
(concat
"\\`\\[?\\("
(mapconcat 'identity
'("looking"
"wanted" "followup" "summary\\( of\\)?"
"help" "query" "problem" "question"
"answer" "reference" "announce"
"How can I" "How to" "Comparison of"
;; ...
)
"\\|")
"\\)\\s *\\("
(mapconcat 'identity
'("for" "for reference" "with" "about")
"\\|")
"\\)?\\]?:?[ \t]*"))
All words that match this regexp will be removed before comparing two subjects.
gnus-summary-gather-exclude-subject
gnus-summary-gather-exclude-subject to say
what subjects should be excluded from the gathering process. The
default is `^ *$\\|^(none)$'.
gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
Subject headers. This means
that totally unrelated articles may end up in the same "thread", which
is confusing. An alternate approach is to look at all the
Message-IDs in all the References headers to find matches.
This will ensure that no gathered threads ever includes unrelated
articles, but it's also means that people who have posted with broken
newsreaders won't be gathered properly. The choice is yours--plague or
cholera:
gnus-gather-threads-by-subject
Subjects exclusively.
gnus-gather-threads-by-references
References headers exclusively.
If you want to test gathering by References, you could say
something like:
(setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
nil, Gnus will gather all loose subtrees into one big tree
and create a dummy root at the top. (Wait a minute. Root at the top?
Yup.) Loose subtrees occur when the real root has expired, or you've
read or killed the root in a previous session.
When there is no real root of a thread, Gnus will have to fudge something. This variable says what fudging method Gnus should use. There are four possible values:
adopt
dummy
gnus-summary-dummy-line-format is used to specify the
format of the dummy roots. It accepts only one format spec: `S',
which is the subject of the article. See section Formatting Variables.
empty
gnus-summary-same-subject as the subject (see section Summary Buffer Format).)
none
nil
nil, all threads will be hidden when the summary buffer is
generated.
nil, the subtree
will be hidden.
nil, the subject change is ignored. If it
is nil, which is the default, a change in the subject will result
in a new thread.
4.
gnus-summary-kill-thread). If the prefix argument is positive,
remove all marks instead. If the prefix argument is negative, tick
articles instead.
gnus-summary-lower-thread).
gnus-summary-raise-thread).
gnus-uu-mark-thread).
gnus-uu-unmark-thread).
gnus-summary-toggle-threads).
gnus-summary-show-thread).
gnus-summary-hide-thread).
gnus-summary-show-all-threads).
gnus-summary-hide-all-threads).
gnus-summary-rethread-current). This works even when the
summary buffer is otherwise unthreaded.
gnus-summary-reparent-thread.
The following commands are thread movement commands. They all understand the numeric prefix.
gnus-summary-next-thread).
gnus-summary-prev-thread).
gnus-summary-down-thread).
gnus-summary-up-thread).
gnus-summary-top-thread).
If you ignore subject while threading, you'll naturally end up with
threads that have several different subjects in them. If you then issue
a command like `T k' (gnus-summary-kill-thread) you might not
wish to kill the entire thread, but just those parts of the thread that
have the same subject as the current article. If you like this idea,
you can fiddle with gnus-thread-operation-ignore-subject. If is
is non-nil (which it is by default), subjects will be ignored
when doing thread commands. If this variable is nil, articles in
the same thread with different subjects will not be included in the
operation in question. If this variable is fuzzy, only articles
that have subjects that are fuzzily equal will be included.
If you are using a threaded summary display, you can sort the threads by
setting gnus-thread-sort-functions, which is a list of functions.
By default, sorting is done on article numbers. Ready-made sorting
predicate functions include gnus-thread-sort-by-number,
gnus-thread-sort-by-author, gnus-thread-sort-by-subject,
gnus-thread-sort-by-date, gnus-thread-sort-by-score, and
gnus-thread-sort-by-total-score.
Each function takes two threads and return non-nil if the first
thread should be sorted before the other. Note that sorting really is
normally done by looking only at the roots of each thread. If you use
more than one function, the primary sort key should be the last function
in the list. You should probably always include
gnus-thread-sort-by-number in the list of sorting
functions--preferably first. This will ensure that threads that are
equal with respect to the other sort criteria will be displayed in
ascending article order.
If you would like to sort by score, then by subject, and finally by number, you could do something like:
(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions
'(gnus-thread-sort-by-number
gnus-thread-sort-by-subject
gnus-thread-sort-by-score))
The threads that have highest score will be displayed first in the summary buffer. When threads have the same score, they will be sorted alphabetically. The threads that have the same score and the same subject will be sorted by number, which is (normally) the sequence in which the articles arrived.
If you want to sort by score and then reverse arrival order, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions
'((lambda (t1 t2)
(not (gnus-thread-sort-by-number t1 t2)))
gnus-thread-sort-by-score))
The function in the gnus-thread-score-function variable (default
+) is used for calculating the total score of a thread. Useful
functions might be max, min, or squared means, or whatever
tickles your fancy.
If you are using an unthreaded display for some strange reason or other,
you have to fiddle with the gnus-article-sort-functions variable.
It is very similar to the gnus-thread-sort-functions, except that
is uses slightly different functions for article comparison. Available
sorting predicate functions are gnus-article-sort-by-number,
gnus-article-sort-by-author, gnus-article-sort-by-subject,
gnus-article-sort-by-date, and gnus-article-sort-by-score.
If you want to sort an unthreaded summary display by subject, you could say something like:
(setq gnus-article-sort-functions
'(gnus-article-sort-by-number
gnus-article-sort-by-subject))
If you read your news from an NNTP server that's far away, the network latencies may make reading articles a chore. You have to wait for a while after pressing n to go to the next article before the article appears. Why can't Gnus just go ahead and fetch the article while you are reading the previous one? Why not, indeed.
First, some caveats. There are some pitfalls to using asynchronous article fetching, especially the way Gnus does it.
Let's say you are reading article 1, which is short, and article 2 is quite long, and you are not interested in reading that. Gnus does not know this, so it goes ahead and fetches article 2. You decide to read article 3, but since Gnus is in the process of fetching article 2, the connection is blocked.
To avoid these situations, Gnus will open two (count 'em two) connections to the server. Some people may think this isn't a very nice thing to do, but I don't see any real alternatives. Setting up that extra connection takes some time, so Gnus startup will be slower.
Gnus will fetch more articles than you will read. This will mean that the link between your machine and the NNTP server will become more loaded than if you didn't use article pre-fetch. The server itself will also become more loaded--both with the extra article requests, and the extra connection.
Ok, so now you know that you shouldn't really use this thing... unless you really want to.
Here's how: Set gnus-asynchronous to t. The rest should
happen automatically.
You can control how many articles that are to be pre-fetched by setting
nntp-async-number. This is five by default, which means that when
you read an article in the group, nntp will pre-fetch the next
five articles. If this variable is t, nntp will pre-fetch
all the articles that it can without bound. If it is nil, no
pre-fetching will be made.
You may wish to create some sort of scheme for choosing which articles
that nntp should consider as candidates for pre-fetching. For
instance, you may wish to pre-fetch all articles with high scores, and
not pre-fetch low-scored articles. You can do that by setting the
gnus-asynchronous-article-function, which will be called with an
alist where the keys are the article numbers. Your function should
return an alist where the articles you are not interested in have been
removed. You could also do sorting on article score and the like.
If you have an extremely slow NNTP connection, you may consider turning article caching on. Each article will then be stored locally under your home directory. As you may surmise, this could potentially use huge amounts of disk space, as well as eat up all your inodes so fast it will make your head swim. In vodka.
Used carefully, though, it could be just an easier way to save articles.
To turn caching on, set gnus-use-cache to t. By default,
all articles that are ticked or marked as dormant will then be copied
over to your local cache (gnus-cache-directory). Whether this
cache is flat or hierarchal is controlled by the
gnus-use-long-file-name variable, as usual.
When re-select a ticked or dormant article, it will be fetched from the cache instead of from the server. As articles in your cache will never expire, this might serve as a method of saving articles while still keeping them where they belong. Just mark all articles you want to save as dormant, and don't worry.
When an article is marked as read, is it removed from the cache.
The entering/removal of articles from the cache is controlled by the
gnus-cache-enter-articles and gnus-cache-remove-articles
variables. Both are lists of symbols. The first is (ticked
dormant) by default, meaning that ticked and dormant articles will be
put in the cache. The latter is (read) by default, meaning that
articles that are marked as read are removed from the cache. Possibly
symbols in these two lists are ticked, dormant,
unread and read.
So where does the massive article-fetching and storing come into the
picture? The gnus-jog-cache command will go through all
subscribed newsgroups, request all unread articles, and store them in
the cache. You should only ever, ever ever ever, use this command if 1)
your connection to the NNTP server is really, really, really slow
and 2) you have a really, really, really huge disk. Seriously.
It is likely that you do not want caching on some groups. For instance,
if your nnml mail is located under your home directory, it makes no
sense to cache it somewhere else under your home directory. Unless you
feel that it's neat to use twice as much space. To limit the caching,
you could set the gnus-uncacheable-groups regexp to
`^nnml', for instance. This variable is nil by
default.
The cache stores information on what articles it contains in its active
file (gnus-cache-active-file). If this file (or any other parts
of the cache) becomes all messed up for some reason or other, Gnus
offers two functions that will try to set things right. M-x
gnus-cache-generate-nov-databases will (re)build all the NOV
files, and gnus-cache-generate-active will (re)generate the active
file.
Closely related to article caching, we have persistent articles. In fact, it's just a different way of looking at caching, and much more useful in my opinion.
Say you're reading a newsgroup, and you happen on to some valuable gem that you want to keep and treasure forever. You'd normally just save it (using one of the many saving commands) in some file. The problem with that is that it's just, well, yucky. Ideally you'd prefer just having the article remain in the group where you found it forever; untouched by the expiry going on at the news server.
This is what a persistent article is--an article that just won't be deleted. It's implemented using the normal cache functions, but you use two explicit commands for managing persistent articles:
gnus-cache-enter-article).
gnus-cache-remove-article). This will normally delete the
article.
Both these commands understand the process/prefix convention.
To avoid having all ticked articles (and stuff) entered into the cache,
you should set gnus-use-cache to passive if you're just
interested in persistent articles:
(setq gnus-use-cache 'passive)
If you have a slow connection, but the idea of using caching seems unappealing to you (and it is, really), you can help the situation some by switching on the backlog. This is where Gnus will buffer already read articles so that it doesn't have to re-fetch articles you've already read. This only helps if you are in the habit of re-selecting articles you've recently read, of course. If you never do that, turning the backlog on will slow Gnus down a little bit, and increase memory usage some.
If you set gnus-keep-backlog to a number n, Gnus will store
at most n old articles in a buffer for later re-fetching. If this
variable is non-nil and is not a number, Gnus will store
all read articles, which means that your Emacs will grow without
bound before exploding and taking your machine down with you. I put
that in there just to keep y'all on your toes.
This variable is nil by default.
Gnus can save articles in a number of ways. Below is the documentation
for saving articles in a fairly straight-forward fashion (i.e., little
processing of the article is done before it is saved). For a different
approach (uudecoding, unsharing) you should use gnus-uu
(see section Decoding Articles).
If gnus-save-all-headers is non-nil, Gnus will not delete
unwanted headers before saving the article.
If the preceding variable is nil, all headers that match the
gnus-saved-headers regexp will be kept, while the rest will be
deleted before saving.
gnus-summary-save-article).
gnus-summary-save-article-mail).
gnus-summary-save-article-rmail).
gnus-summary-save-article-file).
gnus-summary-save-article-body-file).
gnus-summary-save-article-folder).
gnus-summary-save-article-vm).
gnus-summary-pipe-output).
All these commands use the process/prefix convention
(see section Process/Prefix). If you save bunches of articles using these
functions, you might get tired of being prompted for files to save each
and every article in. The prompting action is controlled by
the gnus-prompt-before-saving variable, which is always by
default, giving you that excessive prompting action you know and
loathe. If you set this variable to t instead, you'll be prompted
just once for each series of articles you save. If you like to really
have Gnus do all your thinking for you, you can even set this variable
to nil, which means that you will never be prompted for files to
save articles in. Gnus will simply save all the articles in the default
files.
You can customize the gnus-default-article-saver variable to make
Gnus do what you want it to. You can use any of the four ready-made
functions below, or you can create your own.
gnus-summary-save-in-rmail
gnus-rmail-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-plain-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-in-mail
gnus-mail-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-plain-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-in-file
gnus-file-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-numeric-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-body-in-file
gnus-file-save-name variable to get a file name to save the
article in. The default is gnus-numeric-save-name.
gnus-summary-save-in-folder
rcvstore from the MH
library. Uses the function in the gnus-folder-save-name variable
to get a file name to save the article in. The default is
gnus-folder-save-name, but you can also use
gnus-Folder-save-name. The former creates capitalized names, and
the latter does not.
gnus-summary-save-in-vm
All of these functions, except for the last one, will save the article
in the gnus-article-save-directory, which is initialized from the
SAVEDIR environment variable. This is `~/News/' by
default.
As you can see above, the functions use different functions to find a suitable name of a file to save the article in. Below is a list of available functions that generate names:
gnus-Numeric-save-name
gnus-numeric-save-name
gnus-Plain-save-name
gnus-plain-save-name
You can have Gnus suggest where to save articles by plonking a regexp into
the gnus-split-methods alist. For instance, if you would like to
save articles related to Gnus in the file `gnus-stuff', and articles
related to VM in vm-stuff, you could set this variable to something
like:
(("^Subject:.*gnus\\|^Newsgroups:.*gnus" "gnus-stuff")
("^Subject:.*vm\\|^Xref:.*vm" "vm-stuff")
(my-choosing-function "../other-dir/my-stuff")
((equal gnus-newsgroup-name "mail.misc") "mail-stuff"))
We see that this is a list where each element is a list that has two
elements--the match and the file. The match can either be
a string (in which case it is used as a regexp to match on the article
head); it can be a symbol (which will be called as a function with the
group name as a parameter); or it can be a list (which will be
evaled). If any of these actions have a non-nil result,
the file will be used as a default prompt. In addition, the
result of the operation itself will be used if the function or form
called returns a string or a list of strings.
You basically end up with a list of file names that might be used when saving the current article. (All "matches" will be used.) You will then be prompted for what you really want to use as a name, with file name completion over the results from applying this variable.
This variable is ((gnus-article-archive-name)) by default, which
means that Gnus will look at the articles it saves for an
Archive-name line and use that as a suggestion for the file
name.
Finally, you have the gnus-use-long-file-name variable. If it is
nil, all the preceding functions will replace all periods
(`.') in the group names with slashes (`/')---which means that
the functions will generate hierarchies of directories instead of having
all the files in the toplevel directory
(`~/News/alt/andrea-dworkin' instead of
`~/News/alt.andrea-dworkin'.) This variable is t by default
on most systems. However, for historical reasons, this is nil on
Xenix and usg-unix-v machines by default.
This function also affects kill and score file names. If this variable
is a list, and the list contains the element not-score, long file
names will not be used for score files, if it contains the element
not-save, long file names will not be used for saving, and if it
contains the element not-kill, long file names will not be used
for kill files.
If you'd like to save articles in a hierarchy that looks something like a spool, you could
(setq gnus-use-long-file-name '(not-save)) ; to get a hierarchy (setq gnus-default-article-save 'gnus-summary-save-in-file) ; no encoding
Then just save with o. You'd then read this hierarchy with
ephemeral nneething groups---G D in the group buffer, and
the toplevel directory as the argument (`~/News/'). Then just walk
around to the groups/directories with nneething.
Sometime users post articles (or series of articles) that have been encoded in some way or other. Gnus can decode them for you.
All these functions use the process/prefix convention (see section Process/Prefix) for finding out what articles to work on, with the extension that a "single article" means "a single series". Gnus can find out by itself what articles belong to a series, decode all the articles and unpack/view/save the resulting file(s).
Gnus guesses what articles are in the series according to the following simplish rule: The subjects must be (nearly) identical, except for the last two numbers of the line. (Spaces are largely ignored, however.)
For example: If you choose a subject called `cat.gif (2/3)', Gnus will find all the articles that match the regexp `^cat.gif ([0-9]+/[0-9]+).*$'.
Subjects that are nonstandard, like `cat.gif (2/3) Part 6 of a series', will not be properly recognized by any of the automatic viewing commands, and you have to mark the articles manually with #.
gnus-uu-decode-uu).
gnus-uu-decode-uu-and-save).
gnus-uu-decode-uu-view).
gnus-uu-decode-uu-and-save-view).
Remember that these all react to the presence of articles marked with
the process mark. If, for instance, you'd like to decode and save an
entire newsgroup, you'd typically do M P a
(gnus-uu-mark-all) and then X U
(gnus-uu-decode-uu-and-save).
All this is very much different from how gnus-uu worked with
GNUS 4.1, where you had explicit keystrokes for everything under
the sun. This version of gnus-uu generally assumes that you mark
articles in some way (see section Setting Process Marks) and then press
X u.
Note: When trying to decode articles that have names matching
gnus-uu-notify-files, which is hard-coded to
`[Cc][Ii][Nn][Dd][Yy][0-9]+.\\(gif\\|jpg\\)', gnus-uu will
automatically post an article on `comp.unix.wizards' saying that
you have just viewed the file in question. This feature can't be turned
off.
gnus-uu-decode-unshar).
gnus-uu-decode-unshar-and-save).
gnus-uu-decode-unshar-view).
gnus-uu-decode-unshar-and-save-view).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript-and-save).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript-view).
gnus-uu-decode-postscript-and-save-view).
Adjective, not verb.
Gnus uses rule variables to decide how to view a file. All these variables are on the form
(list '(regexp1 command2)
'(regexp2 command2)
...)
gnus-uu-user-view-rules
sox to convert an `.au' sound file, you could
say something like:
(setq gnus-uu-user-view-rules
(list '(\"\\\\.au$\" \"sox %s -t .aiff > /dev/audio\")))
gnus-uu-user-view-rules-end
gnus-uu-user-archive-rules
gnus-uu-grabbed-file-functions
gnus-uu-grab-view
gnus-uu-grab-move
gnus-uu is not a MIME package (yet), so this is slightly
kludgey.
gnus-uu does its work.
nil means that gnus-uu won't peek inside archives
looking for files to display.
nil means that the user will always be asked to save a file
after viewing it.
nil means that gnus-uu will ignore the default viewing
rules.
nil means that gnus-uu will ignore the default archive
unpacking commands.
nil means that gnus-uu will strip all carriage returns
from articles.
nil means that gnus-uu will mark articles that were
unsuccessfully decoded as unread.
nil means that gnus-uu will try to fix
uuencoded files that have had trailing spaces deleted.
nil means that gnus-uu will ignore the viewing
commands defined by the rule variables and just fudge a MIME
content type based on the file name. The result will be fed to
metamail for viewing.
nil means that gnus-uu, when asked to save without
decoding, will save in digests. If this variable is nil,
gnus-uu will just save everything in a file without any
embellishments. The digesting almost conforms to RFC1153--no easy way
to specify any meaningful volume and issue numbers were found, so I
simply dropped them.
gnus-uu-post-include-before-composing
nil means that gnus-uu will ask for a file to encode
before you compose the article. If this variable is t, you can
either include an encoded file with C-c C-i or have one included
for you when you post the article.
gnus-uu-post-length
gnus-uu-post-threaded
nil means that gnus-uu will post the encoded file in a
thread. This may not be smart, as no other decoder I have seen are able
to follow threads when collecting uuencoded articles. (Well, I have
seen one package that does that---gnus-uu, but somehow, I don't
think that counts...) Default is nil.
gnus-uu-post-separate-description
nil means that the description will be posted in a separate
article. The first article will typically be numbered (0/x). If this
variable is nil, the description the user enters will be included
at the beginning of the first article, which will be numbered (1/x).
Default is t.
After decoding, if the file is some sort of archive, Gnus will attempt to unpack the archive and see if any of the files in the archive can be viewed. For instance, if you have a gzipped tar file `pics.tar.gz' containing the files `pic1.jpg' and `pic2.gif', Gnus will uncompress and de-tar the main file, and then view the two pictures. This unpacking process is recursive, so if the archive contains archives of archives, it'll all be unpacked.
Finally, Gnus will normally insert a pseudo-article for each extracted file into the summary buffer. If you go to these "articles", you will be prompted for a command to run (usually Gnus will make a suggestion), and then the command will be run.
If gnus-view-pseudo-asynchronously is nil, Emacs will wait
until the viewing is done before proceeding.
If gnus-view-pseudos is automatic, Gnus will not insert
the pseudo-articles into the summary buffer, but view them
immediately. If this variable is not-confirm, the user won't even
be asked for a confirmation before viewing is done.
If gnus-view-pseudos-separately is non-nil, one
pseudo-article will be created for each file to be viewed. If
nil, all files that use the same viewing command will be given as
a list of parameters to that command.
If gnus-insert-pseudo-articles is non-nil, insert
pseudo-articles when decoding. It is t by default.
So; there you are, reading your pseudo-articles in your virtual newsgroup from the virtual server; and you think: Why isn't anything real anymore? How did we get here?
Reading through this huge manual, you may have quite forgotten that the object of newsreaders are to actually, like, read what people have written. Reading articles. Unfortunately, people are quite bad at writing, so there are tons of functions and variables to make reading these articles easier.
Not only do you want your article buffer to look like fruit salad, but you want it to look like technicolor fruit salad.
gnus-article-highlight).
gnus-article-highlight-headers). The
highlighting will be done according to the gnus-header-face-alist
variable, which is a list where each element has the form (regexp
name content). regexp is a regular expression for matching the
header, name is the face used for highlighting the header name and
content is the face for highlighting the header value. The first
match made will be used. Note that regexp shouldn't have `^'
prepended--Gnus will add one.
gnus-article-highlight-citation).
Some variables to customize the citation highlights:
gnus-cite-parse-max-size
gnus-cite-prefix-regexp
gnus-cite-max-prefix
gnus-cite-face-list
gnus-supercite-regexp
gnus-supercite-secondary-regexp
gnus-cite-minimum-match-count
gnus-cite-attribution-prefix
gnus-cite-attribution-suffix
gnus-cite-attribution-face
gnus-article-highlight-signature).
Everything after gnus-signature-separator in an article will be
considered a signature and will be highlighted with
gnus-signature-face, which is italic by default.
Or rather, hiding certain things in each article. There usually is much too much cruft in most articles.
gnus-article-hide-headers). See section Hiding Headers.
gnus-article-hide-boring-headers). See section Hiding Headers.
gnus-article-hide-signature).
gnus-article-hide-pgp).
gnus-article-hide-citation). Some variables for
customizing the hiding:
gnus-cite-hide-percentage
gnus-cite-hide-absolute
gnus-cited-text-button-line-format
gnus-article-hide-citation-in-followups). This isn't very
useful as an interactive command, but might be a handy function to stick
in gnus-article-display-hook (see section Customizing Articles).
All these "hiding" commands are toggles, but if you give a negative prefix to these commands, they will show what they have previously hidden. If you give a positive prefix, they will always hide.
Also see section Article Highlighting for further variables for citation customization.
gnus-signature-limit provides a limit to what is considered a
signature. If it is a number, no signature may not be longer (in
characters) than that number. If it is a function, the function will be
called without any parameters, and if it returns nil, there is no
signature in the buffer. If it is a string, it will be used as a
regexp. If it matches, the text in question is not a signature.
We call this "article washing" for a really good reason. Namely, the A key was taken, so we had to use the W key instead.
Washing is defined by us as "changing something from something to something else", but normally results in something looking better. Cleaner, perhaps.
gnus-summary-stop-page-breaking).
gnus-summary-caesar-message).
gnus-summary-toggle-header).
gnus-summary-verbose-header).
gnus-summary-toggle-mime).
gnus-article-treat-overstrike).
gnus-article-fill-cited-article).
gnus-article-remove-cr).
gnus-article-remove-trailing-blank-lines).
gnus-article-de-quoted-unreadable).
gnus-article-display-x-face). The command executed by this
function is given by the gnus-article-x-face-command variable. If
this variable is a string, this string will be executed in a sub-shell.
If it is a function, this function will be called with the face as the
argument. If the gnus-article-x-face-too-ugly (which is a regexp)
matches the From header, the face will not be shown. The default
action under Emacs is to fork off an xv to view the face; under
XEmacs the default action is to display the face before the From
header. (It's nicer if XEmacs has been compiled with X-Face support --
that will make display somewhat faster. If there's no native X-Face
support, Gnus will try to convert the X-Face header using
external programs from the pbmplus package and friends.) If you
want to have this function in the display hook, it should probably come
last.
gnus-article-add-buttons).
gnus-article-add-buttons-to-head).
People often include references to other stuff in articles, and it would be nice if Gnus could just fetch whatever it is that people talk about with the minimum of fuzz.
Gnus adds buttons to certain standard references by default: Well-formed URLs, mail addresses and Message-IDs. This is controlled by two variables, one that handles article bodies and one that handles article heads:
gnus-button-alist
(REGEXP BUTTON-PAR USE-P FUNCTION DATA-PAR)
0 here.
evaled, and if the result is non-nil,
this is considered a match. This is useful if you want extra sifting to
avoid false matches.
So the full entry for buttonizing URLs is then
("<URL:\\([^\n\r>]*\\)>" 0 t gnus-button-url 1)
(HEADER REGEXP BUTTON-PAR USE-P FUNCTION DATA-PAR)
header is a regular expression.
The date is most likely generated in some obscure timezone you've never heard of, so it's quite nice to be able to find out what the time was when the article was sent.
gnus-article-date-ut).
gnus-article-date-local).
gnus-article-date-lapsed).
gnus-article-date-original). This can
be useful if you normally use some other conversion function and is
worried that it might be doing something totally wrong. Say, claiming
that the article was posted in 1854. Although something like that is
totally impossible. Don't you trust me? *titter*
You can have the summary buffer sorted in various ways, even though I can't really see why you'd want that.
gnus-summary-sort-by-number).
gnus-summary-sort-by-author).
gnus-summary-sort-by-subject).
gnus-summary-sort-by-date).
gnus-summary-sort-by-score).
These functions will work both when you use threading and when you don't use threading. In the latter case, all summary lines will be sorted, line by line. In the former case, sorting will be done on a root-by-root basis, which might not be what you were looking for. To toggle whether to use threading, type T T (see section Thread Commands).
If you'd like to read the parent of the current article, and it is not
displayed in the summary buffer, you might still be able to. That is,
if the current group is fetched by NNTP, the parent hasn't expired
and the References in the current article are not mangled, you
can just press ^ or A r
(gnus-summary-refer-parent-article). If everything goes well,
you'll get the parent. If the parent is already displayed in the
summary buffer, point will just move to this article.
You can have Gnus fetch all articles mentioned in the References
header of the article by pushing A R
(gnus-summary-refer-references).
You can also ask the NNTP server for an arbitrary article, no
matter what group it belongs to. M-^
(gnus-summary-refer-article) will ask you for a
Message-ID, which is one of those long thingies that look
something like `<38o6up$6f2@hymir.ifi.uio.no>'. You have to get
it all exactly right. No fuzzy searches, I'm afraid.
If the group you are reading is located on a backend that does not
support fetching by Message-ID very well (like nnspool),
you can set gnus-refer-article-method to an NNTP method. It
would, perhaps, be best if the NNTP server you consult is the same
as the one that keeps the spool you are reading from updated, but that's
not really necessary.
Most of the mail backends support fetching by Message-ID, but do
not do a particularly excellent job of it. That is, nnmbox and
nnbabyl are able to locate articles from any groups, while
nnml and nnfolder are only able to locate articles that
have been posted to the current group. (Anything else would be too time
consuming.) nnmh does not support this at all.
Different people like to read news using different methods. This being Gnus, we offer a small selection of minor modes for the summary buffers.
Some newsreaders (like nn and, uhm, nn) use a two-phased
reading interface. The user first marks the articles she wants to read
from a summary buffer. Then she starts reading the articles with just
an article buffer displayed.
Gnus provides a summary buffer minor mode that allows
this---gnus-pick-mode. This basically means that a few process
mark commands become one-keystroke commands to allow easy marking, and
it makes one additional command for switching to the summary buffer
available.
Here are the available keystrokes when using pick mode:
gnus-summary-mark-as-processable).
gnus-summary-unmark-as-processable).
gnus-summary-unmark-all-processable).
gnus-uu-mark-thread).
gnus-uu-unmark-thread).
gnus-uu-mark-region).
gnus-uu-unmark-region).
gnus-uu-mark-by-regexp).
gnus-uu-unmark-by-regexp).
gnus-uu-mark-buffer).
gnus-uu-unmark-buffer).
gnus-pick-start-reading). If
given a prefix, mark all unpicked articles as read first. If
gnus-pick-display-summary is non-nil, the summary buffer
will still be visible when you are reading.
If this sounds like a good idea to you, you could say:
(add-hook 'gnus-summary-mode-hook 'gnus-pick-mode)
gnus-pick-mode-hook is run in pick minor mode buffers.
If you spend much time in binary groups, you may grow tired of hitting X u, n, RET all the time. M-x gnus-binary-mode is a minor mode for summary buffers that makes all ordinary Gnus article selection functions uudecode series of articles and display the result instead of just displaying the articles the normal way.
In fact, the only way to see the actual articles if you have turned this
mode on is the g command (gnus-binary-show-article).
gnus-binary-mode-hook is called in binary minor mode buffers.
If you don't like the normal Gnus summary display, you might try setting
gnus-use-trees to t. This will create (by default) an
additional tree buffer. You can execute all summary mode commands
in the tree buffer.
There are a few variables to customize the tree display, of course:
gnus-tree-mode-hook
gnus-tree-mode-line-format
gnus-selected-tree-face
modeline.
gnus-tree-line-format
Legal specs are:
From header.
See section Formatting Variables.
Variables related to the display are:
gnus-tree-brackets
((?[ . ?]) (?( . ?)) (?{ . ?})).
gnus-tree-parent-child-edges
(?- ?\\ ?|).
nil, Gnus will try to keep the tree
buffer as small as possible to allow more room for the other Gnus
windows. If this variable is a number, the tree buffer will never be
higher than that number. The default is t.
gnus-generate-horizontal-tree and
gnus-generate-vertical-tree (which is the default).
Here's and example from a horizontal tree buffer:
{***}-(***)-[odd]-[Gun]
| \[Jan]
| \[odd]-[Eri]
| \(***)-[Eri]
| \[odd]-[Paa]
\[Bjo]
\[Gun]
\[Gun]-[Jor]
Here's the same thread displayed in a vertical tree buffer:
{***}
|--------------------------\-----\-----\
(***) [Bjo] [Gun] [Gun]
|--\-----\-----\ |
[odd] [Jan] [odd] (***) [Jor]
| | |--\
[Gun] [Eri] [Eri] [odd]
|
[Paa]
Some commands only make sense in mail groups. If these commands are illegal in the current group, they will raise a hell and let you know.
All these commands (except the expiry and edit commands) use the process/prefix convention (see section Process/Prefix).
gnus-summary-expire-articles).
gnus-summary-expire-articles-now). This means that all
articles that are eligible for expiry in the current group will
disappear forever into that big `/dev/null' in the sky.
gnus-summary-delete-article).
gnus-summary-move-article).
gnus-summary-copy-article).
gnus-summary-crosspost-article). This will create a new copy of
the article in the other group, and the Xref headers of the article will
be properly updated.
gnus-summary-import-article). You will be prompted for a file
name, a From header and a Subject header.
gnus-summary-move-article).
gnus-summary-edit-article). To finish
editing and make the changes permanent, type C-c C-c
(gnus-summary-edit-article-done).
gnus-summary-respool-query).
If you move (or copy) articles regularly, you might wish to have Gnus
suggest where to put the articles. gnus-move-split-methods is a
variable that uses the same syntax as gnus-split-methods
(see section Saving Articles). You may customize that variable to create
suggestions you find reasonable.
gnus-summary-mode-hook
gnus-summary-generate-hook
gnus-summary-prepare-hook
gnus-summary-fetch-faq). Gnus will try to get the
FAQ from gnus-group-faq-directory, which is usually a directory
on a remote machine. This variable can also be a list of directories.
In that case, giving a prefix to this command will allow you to choose
between the various sites. ange-ftp probably will be used for
fetching the file.
gnus-summary-describe-group). If given a prefix, force
rereading the description from the server.
gnus-summary-describe-briefly).
gnus-info-find-node).
gnus-summary-search-article-forward).
gnus-summary-search-article-backward).
gnus-summary-execute-command).
gnus-summary-universal-argument).
gnus-summary-enter-digest-group). Gnus will try to
guess what article type is currently displayed unless you give a prefix
to this command, which forces a "digest" interpretation. Basically,
whenever you see a message that is a collection of other messages on
some format, you A D and read these messages in a more convenient
fashion.
gnus-summary-toggle-truncation).
gnus-summary-expand-window).
If given a prefix, force an article window configuration.
Exiting from the summary buffer will normally update all info on the group and return you to the group buffer.
gnus-summary-exit). gnus-summary-prepare-exit-hook is
called before doing much of the exiting, and calls
gnus-summary-expire-articles by default.
gnus-summary-exit-hook is called after finishing the exiting
process.
gnus-summary-exit-no-update).
gnus-summary-catchup-and-exit).
gnus-summary-catchup-all-and-exit).
gnus-summary-catchup-and-goto-next-group).
gnus-summary-reselect-current-group). If given a prefix, select
all articles, both read and unread.
gnus-summary-rescan-group). If given a prefix, select all
articles, both read and unread.
gnus-summary-next-group).
gnus-summary-prev-group).
gnus-exit-group-hook is called when you exit the current
group.
If you're in the habit of exiting groups, and then changing your mind
about it, you might set gnus-kill-summary-on-exit to nil.
If you do that, Gnus won't kill the summary buffer when you exit it.
(Quelle surprise!) Instead it will change the name of the buffer to
something like `*Dead Summary ... *' and install a minor mode
called gnus-dead-summary-mode. Now, if you switch back to this
buffer, you'll find that all keys are mapped to a function called
gnus-summary-wake-up-the-dead. So tapping any keys in a dead
summary buffer will result in a live, normal summary buffer.
There will never be more than one dead summary buffer at any one time.
The data on the current group will be updated (which articles you have
read, which articles you have replied to, etc.) when you exit the
summary buffer. If the gnus-use-cross-reference variable is
t (which is the default), articles that are cross-referenced to
this group and are marked as read, will also be marked as read in the
other subscribed groups they were cross-posted to. If this variable is
neither nil nor t, the article will be marked as read in
both subscribed and unsubscribed groups.
Marking cross-posted articles as read ensures that you'll never have to read the same article more than once. Unless, of course, somebody has posted it to several groups separately. Posting the same article to several groups (not cross-posting) is called spamming, and you are by law required to send nasty-grams to anyone who perpetrates such a heinous crime.
Remember: Cross-posting is kinda ok, but posting the same article separately to several groups is not. Massive cross-posting (aka. velveeta) is to be avoided.
One thing that may cause Gnus to not do the cross-posting thing
correctly is if you use an NNTP server that supports XOVER
(which is very nice, because it speeds things up considerably) which
does not include the Xref header in its NOV lines. This is
Evil, but all too common, alas, alack. Gnus tries to Do The Right Thing
even with XOVER by registering the Xref lines of all
articles you actually read, but if you kill the articles, or just mark
them as read without reading them, Gnus will not get a chance to snoop
the Xref lines out of these articles, and will be unable to use
the cross reference mechanism.
To check whether your NNTP server includes the Xref header
in its overview files, try `telnet your.nntp.server nntp',
`MODE READER' on inn servers, and then say `LIST
overview.fmt'. This may not work, but if it does, and the last line you
get does not read `Xref:full', then you should shout and whine at
your news admin until she includes the Xref header in the
overview files.
If you want Gnus to get the Xrefs right all the time, you have to
set gnus-nov-is-evil to t, which slows things down
considerably.
C'est la vie.
Go to the previous, next section.