Gnus Quick Start

Many free software projects use mailing lists as the primary means of communication and development. Just being subscribed to two or three mailing lists can be overwhelming. Some mailing lists can have hundreds of emails sent per day! That's where Gnus starts to shine. Gnus will help you keep track and respond to all of the hundreds of email messages.

Gnus was originally designed to be a newsreader, which is not an email client. If you are reading a LOT of mailing lists, or have a ridiculous amount of mail to get through, then you may like Gnus. If you are not subscribed to many mailing lists, then you should probably not use Gnus.

This quick start guide will help you set up gnus to manage an email account from dismail.de, which is a gratis and libre email provider. If you decide to use a dismail.de account, then please consider donating. Another good email provider is riseup.net. Both email providers use only free software, which means they both are significantly better than gmail, yahoo, or hotmail. If you prefer a commercial solution, you might like fastmail, which is a company that is developing new email standards.

This guide describes how to set up email in a way that will "just work."

"difficult-to-set-up" options are briefly mentioned in the section Isn't IMAP slow and old school?

Some cool guides online:

https://github.com/gongzhitaao/GnusSolution/blob/master/gnus-conf.el

https://fontawesome.com/v3.2/cheatsheet/

Telling Gnus who you are


(setq
 user-mail-address	"steven@dismail.de"
 user-full-name	"Steven Crowder")

You will also want to set up the connection.


  (setq gnus-select-method
        '(nnimap "imap.dismail.de"))

If you need to use multiple email accounts

"gnus-select-methods" is the default email account that you have, and "gnus-secondary-select-methods" is for any other email account that you have (or news accounts, RSS feeds, maildirs, etc). This is useful if you have a dismail.de account and a riseup.net account, and other email accounts.


  (setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
        '((nnimap "imap.dismail.de"
                  (nnimap-stream ssl)))
        (nnimap "uni"
                   ("imap.duke.edu")))

If your remote server has non standard options

You really should not need to specify this information, but if after reading Gnus Quick Start, and M-x gnus still doesn't work, then you try be more explicit in your connection methods.


  (setq gnus-select-method
        '(nnimap "my imap method"
                 (nnimap-address "imap.some-weird-address.edu")
                 (nnimap-server-port "234")  ;;maybe it uses an odd port
                 (nnimap-stream ssl)))

Isn't IMAP slow and old school?

Not really. Most online email clients still use IMAP. It works for them. IMAP is the recommended way to read your email, because it just works. If you want it to just work, then skip this chapter.

However, if you are or want to be a power user, there are other ways of using Gnus that offer better searching capabilities. The two modern methods that come to mind are maildir, or a maildir combined with a local dovecot server. The latter is what the current maintainer of Emacs does.

COMMENT local imap connection with dovecot (what the current maintainer of emacs does)

COMMENT So you'd rather use a maildir?

Well first you need to set up a way to download your email. I recommend isync. It seems to be getting a lot of hype. It syncs email back and forth between you and your maildir.

Here's some info from the Emacs list. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnus-english/2016-09/msg00051.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnus-english/2016-09/msg00051.html

Here's an initial info from the internet archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20160305042051/http://roland.entierement.nu/blog/2010/09/08/gnus-dovecot-offlineimap-search-a-howto.html

Starting Gnus for the first time

Once you have your downloaded mail, then you need to tell Gnus about the maildir.

M-x Gnus

After Gnus loads you should see a mostly empty screen. This is your group buffer. It displays all of your groups, which a normal email client would call folders. Gnus doesn't show you all of your email folders, because you need to tell Gnus which folders to use by default. ¹ To do this, press the ^ key.

You are now in the server buffer. The server buffer shows you all of your live accounts (aka email connections) and how you interact with each server. If you use gnus with 5 different email accounts, then you will see 5 different servers. Press RET on the email server that says "dismail.de".

Now you should see your email folders or groups. To subscribe to a group press "u". You should probably subscribe to your Inbox, Sent, Trash, and Draft folders. When you are done subscribing to groups (folders), press q.

Now you should see all of your email folders. This buffer is called the group buffer. Navigate to your inbox, and press RET. You are now in the summary buffer. You can move to the next unread email with the "n" key. When you do that, you should see your email open up in the article buffer. You can scroll through your email with the "SPC" key. You can read the next email by pressing "SPC" multiple times or by hitting "n".

Before we leave your inbox, here is a list of useful commands for the summary buffer:

Now press "q" to exit your inbox. You will now see the rest of your email folders. If you want to mark all of the email in your trash folder as read, go ahead and place point over it, and press "c g" to mark all the emails as read.

Press "g" to make gnus check for new mail. You should see your Inbox and Trash folder disappear. That's because Gnus, by default only shows folders that contain unread emails. Once you get used to this, it's really nice.

If for some reason you want to display all of your email folders, press "g". If you want to go to a particular email folder, then press "j". If you want to search for a particular email, place point over the email folder you'd like to search and press "GG RET RET".

Some more information

read these pages: https://github.com/redguardtoo/mastering-emacs-in-one-year-guide/blob/master/gnus-guide-en.org http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/12/emacs-30-day-challenge-glimpse-of-bbdb.html http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/12/emacs-30-day-challenge-using-gnus-to.html practical gnus tutorial http://blog.binchen.org/posts/notes-on-using-gnus.html#sec-1 http://sachachua.com/blog/2008/05/emacs-gnus-searching-mail/ using mime in gnus http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-mime.html When you first start gnus you need to type "t". Not sure why, but you do. You also need to type j (jump) to a particular folder also sometimes your inboxes won't sure up (if they are contain no unread mail mail) so to see all inbex

(setq smtpmail-smtp-service 587 gnus-ignored-newsgroups "^to\\.\\|^[0-9. ]+\$ \\|$\$\\|^[\"]\"[#'()]") Put the following in your ~/.authinfo file, replacing with your email address and replacing with your password—or your application-specific password:

When sending your first email from gnus, you might get a STARTTLS error. If you’re using homebrew in Mac OS X, you can install the necessary package with brew install gnutls.

You can find more information in the following sections.

Setting up Gnus

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 6e745af2-398f-49a2-a695-59e0c979bd9e :END:

This files just sets up some variables that I use later on, that I want to be secret. #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (require 'gnus) (let ((path "~/.config/emacs/lisp/init-gnus-secret.org")) (when (and (file-exists-p path) (file-readable-p path)) (org-babel-load-file path))) #+END_SRC

pretty obvious settings

Gnus will always ask you if you want to read the dribble file. I don't want Gnus to ask me for permission every time to read a startup file. Just read it.


  (setq gnus-always-read-dribble-file t)

Posting Styles

info:gnus#Posting Styles

Changing my signature based on what email account I'm using.

Posting an article is the same thing as sending an email, since gnus is a usenet reader, gnus uses usenet terminology.

I can specify posting styles depending on the account. So for example I can specify that when I reply to an article (email), I should use a specific From field. That's what this next bit of code does.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq my/default-signature (concat user-full-name " (joshuaBPMan in #guix)" "\nSent from Emacs and Gnus https://gnucode.me https://video.hardlimit.com/accounts/joshua_branson/video-channels https://propernaming.org \"You can have whatever you want, as long as you help enough other people get what they want.\" - Zig Ziglar "))

(setq gnus-posting-styles '( ;; My default hotmail posting style (".*" (signature my/default-signature) (address user-mail-address)) ;; when I post to something else stuff (".*Some-string-that-matches-a-different-email-account.*" (signature "Some Cool Signature\nThis is on a new line") (address "someEmailAccount@riseup.net")) ))

#+END_SRC

But what about C-x m ? Well you need to tell it what your signature is as well.


   (setq message-signature my/default-signature)

BUT basically, if I have a bunch of email accounts, It would be nice that when I reply or post new articles (email), than Gnus will change the From automatically. This method will definitely work for posting articles, but will to work when replying to articles?

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle no (setq gnus-posting-styles '( ;; My default hotmail posting style (".*" (signature "Joshua\nSent From Emacs") (address "joeRoegan@hotmail.com")) ;; when I post to purdue stuff (".*dismail.*" (signature "Joshua Branson\nPurdue Univeristy\nHonors College\nSent From Emacs") (address "someDismailAccount@dismail.de")) ))

#+END_SRC

COMMENT polymode

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 018c1252-b2f1-412f-80da-27d7f170720b :END:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (require 'polymode)

(defun my-set-up-polymode () (define-hostmode poly-message-hostmode :mode 'message-mode)

(define-innermode poly-message-org-innermode :mode 'org-mode :head-matcher "--text follows this line--\n" :tail-matcher "^--\n" :head-mode 'host :tail-mode 'host)

(define-polymode poly-message-mode :hostmode 'poly-message-hostmode :innermodes '(poly-message-org-innermode)))

;; (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist ;; '("$?:\*\(?:mail\*\|unsent mail\*org$\)" . poly-message-mode))

(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("^\\*mail\\*$" . poly-message-mode)) #+END_SRC

Making Gnus prettier

:PROPERTIES: :ID: cda56b7e-e071-4dd1-9619-fe7a317d70c0 :END: My default summary line format #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq gnus-summary-line-format "%d %U%R%z%I%(%[%4L: %-23,23f%]%) %s \n") #+END_SRC

more attractive summary buffer http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.gnus/browse_thread/thread/a673a74356e7141f #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (when window-system (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-indent " ") (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-root "● ") (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-false-root "◯ ") (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-single-indent "◎ ") (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-vertical "│") (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-leaf-with-other "├─► ") (setq gnus-sum-thread-tree-single-leaf "╰─► "))

(setq gnus-summary-line-format (concat "%0{%U%R%z%}" "%3{│%}" "%1{%d%}" "%3{│%}" ;; date " " "%4{%-20,20f%}" ;; name " " "%3{│%}" " " "%1{%B%}" "%s\n"))

(setq gnus-summary-display-arrow t) #+END_SRC

use some org features inside message mode

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 9dd9004a-b53e-42a0-b52f-53abfaaafed4 :END:

This is kind of cool!

https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-outside-org.html

archiving mail aka coping mail to the sent folder

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp ;;(add-hook 'message-mode-hook 'orgstruct-mode) #+END_SRC :PROPERTIES: :ID: b2a95930-a80c-4a9a-8aed-4b41684841b4 :END:

When gnus sends email, it'll copy the sent mail in a local file on disk, but sometimes you'd like a copy of that email on the server. So after you send an email, gnus will make sure the sent email ends up in your "sent" folder.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle no ;; Archive outgoing email in Sent folder on imap.dismail.de (setq gnus-message-archive-method '(nnimap "imap.dismail.de") gnus-message-archive-group "Sent")

Make gnus startup faster

#+END_SRC :PROPERTIES: :ID: 65e0d067-88fe-4eb0-bfce-5d21c72411f7 :END: These two variables make gnus not check for any new newsgroups and stops gnus from trying to filter out outdated newsgroups. After you've opened up gnus a couple of times, you don't need gnus to do these things. But you can always subscribe to new groups by pressing "U" in the group buffer.

Don't change gnu-read-active-file

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq gnus-check-new-newsgroups nil gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups nil) #+END_SRC Setting the next line to nil will slow down gnus apparently info:gnus#The Active File So don't do this in your gnus set up.

(setq gnus-read-active-file nil)

Fixing the Summary Buffer

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 6c98f225-5cbc-424b-a32f-69e899d41327 :END:

There's no need to recenter the summary buffer all the time. It only slows gnus down.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq gnus-auto-center-summary nil) #+END_SRC

Let's enter the summary buffer faster eh?

encrypted email

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq gnus-nov-is-evil nil gnus-show-threads t gnus-use-cross-reference nil) #+END_SRC :PROPERTIES: :ID: e651daa3-d45f-4e76-8338-0c55f3845108 :END: Until I get newer gpg keys, I'll go ahead and not encrypt stuff

Let's go ahead and sign and encrypt messages if I recognize the senders by default #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq mm-verify-option 'known mm-decrypt-option 'known) #+END_SRC

#+begin_src emacs-lisp (setq mm-verify-option 'never mm-decrypt-option 'never) #+end_src

On reply encrypt my email

managing spam

Gnus comes with some cool spamming features, but it's not good. Why use it, when the email server can do this?

Searching in Gnus

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle no (setq spam-blacklist "/home/joshua/.config/emacs/lisp/blacklist" spam-use-blacklist t) (spam-initialize) #+END_SRC :PROPERTIES: :ID: 63ae4bc7-3e9b-4add-a364-db36ec2975e5 :END: Set up search in GNUS. If you are using IMAP, then this package will just work for you.

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusGmail#toc21

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle no ;;(use-package nnir :defer t) #+END_SRC

setting up email lists

:PROPERTIES: :ID: c1e24635-82c3-4fe1-9c7a-439175e15ca7 :END:

Sometimes when you are subscribed to mailing lists, you can get multiple email messages. Suppose that you email the mailing list. Someone can respond to you directly and CC the mailing list. To avoid that, tell Gnus which mailing lists you are subscribed to. This way, someone will only respond to the mailing list. Gnus does this by using the Mail-Followup-To header.

info:message#Mailing Lists

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq message-subscribed-addresses '( "bug-guix@gnu.org" "bug-hurd@gnu.org" "guix-devel@gnu.org" "help-guix@gnu.org" "emacs-devel@gnu.org" "arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk" ))

;; this bit of code below tells gnus to look for group parameters that ;; tell gnus, this group is an email list. These two options below ;; though, should really only be needed on "closed mailing lists" aka ;; lists where people are expected to be subscribed to get the email.

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

;; (setq gnus-parameters '( ;; (to-address . "guix-devel@gnu.org") ;; (subscribed . t) ;; ))

#+END_SRC

Kill mail buffer after you send an email

:PROPERTIES: :ID: d7cbe98a-4be8-4ffb-87d8-ce8d62302ae2 :END:

Message mode is rather silly in that it does not kill the send message buffer after you send an email. It's silly to still see the sent buffer after you've sent it, so this fixes that. After you send a message, the sent buffer disappears.

scanning news with gnus daemon

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq message-kill-buffer-on-exit t) #+END_SRC :PROPERTIES: :ID: 50a08919-f279-419e-abe6-9c179130a872 :END: info:gnus#Daemons

Gnus Demon lets you do various tasks at certain points in time. For example, suppose you want Gnus to check for new email. You can do that fairly easily with a ready made handler called gnus-demon-scanmail. The following will check for news email after Emacs has been idle for two minutes, but it may only show updates in Emacs. To get an awesome popup, I'll have to do more fiddling. Filezilla is able to show me updates when it's done uploading files. At least it has in the past. BUT in order to show updates, I need to have dbus. GuixSD may not have dbus.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-add-scanmail nil 2) #+END_SRC

These links below will help me to figure this out.

http://www.thregr.org/~wavexx/software/gnus-desktop-notify.el/

https://github.com/jwiegley/alert

Making gnus check if I want to add an attachment

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Desktop-Notifications.html

https://www.topbug.net/blog/2016/12/09/attachment-reminder-in-emacs-message-mode/

(defun my-message-current-line-cited-p () "Indicate whether the line at point is a cited line." (save-match-data (string-match (concat "^" message-cite-prefix-regexp) (buffer-substring (line-beginning-position) (line-end-position)))))

(defun my-message-says-attachment-p () "Return t if the message suggests there can be an attachment." (save-excursion (goto-char (point-min)) (save-match-data (let (search-result) (while (and (setq search-result (re-search-forward "\$attach\\|pdf\\|file\$" nil t)) (my-message-current-line-cited-p))) search-result))))

(defun my-message-has-attachment-p () "Return t if the message has an attachment." (save-excursion (goto-char (point-min)) (save-match-data (re-search-forward "<#part" nil t))))

(defun my-message-pre-send-check-attachment () (when (and (my-message-says-attachment-p) (not (my-message-has-attachment-p))) (unless (y-or-n-p "The message suggests that you may want to attach something, but no attachment is found. Send anyway?") (error "It seems that an attachment is needed, but none was found. Aborting sending.")))) (add-hook 'message-send-hook 'my-message-pre-send-check-attachment)

Summary Buffer

info:gnus#Summary Sorting

Sorting the summary buffer by most recent date:

C-u C-c C-s C-d

I would like this set up for my inbox email account.

ranking groups

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 5e527dc8-9d1a-427c-a529-fd88fe080194 :END:

Make Gnus sort the group buffer based on how often I read each group. When you exit the summary buffer, increase the score of that group. This makes that group a little bit more important.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (add-hook 'gnus-summary-exit-hook 'gnus-summary-bubble-group) #+END_SRC

displaying your topics when you enter gnus

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 8264d472-e08d-4b10-95bc-0fee75c37a76 :END:

Gnus can put various email in certain topic headings. For instance if you have a lot of email from different email servers, you can organize them according to topic "Fastmail" and topic "Roundcube".

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode) #+END_SRC

read html mail

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 4150a9e8-5bcf-474c-ade4-cec758e7f427 :END:

You have 2 main options here. You can use the elisp shr for this or you can use gnus-w3m if you have w3m installed. Shr is written in elisp. w3m is written in C or C++. So I'm guessing that w3m is faster. So I'm going to use gnus-w3m.

I'm assuming that w3m is faster than the built in shr which is used by eww.

I can also use w3m, which uses the emacs-w3m, but I'm not sure how updated that is.

I've decided that I like the default 'shr. the w3m is really annoying to try to use.

and 3wm has not seen much updates in the past couple of years. #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp ;;(use-package w3m ) ;;(setq mm-text-html-renderer 'w3m) (setq mm-text-html-renderer 'shr)

;; set the max width of the shr-renderer to be 80, which is what ;; fill-column is set to. (setq shr-width fill-column)

#+END_SRC

Expiring Mail

Mail/email marked as expire-able means that gnus will delete the email after a period of time. I like gnus to delete the email after 30 days, but it might be better if the email server did this too...idk.

When you press "E" on a mail item in the summary buffer, this marks it as expire-able.

Delete mail marked expire-able after 30 days.

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 60caba9f-04ef-470c-9da9-40108bfd53b7 :END:

All email that I mark with an E will be deleted in 30 days.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq nnmail-expiry-wait 30) #+END_SRC

Auto expire v. total expire

It's pretty tedious to have to press E on every article that I read. The Gnus manual recommends to use auto-expire.

Auto-expire is probably faster and gives you greater flexibility.

Total-expire does not work well with adaptive scoring.

I'm going to try to use auto-expire and make gnus press E for me everytime I select an article.

Though I'm not sure how to turn on auto-expiry. I think you specify it via group parameters.

deleting boring headers from email

automatically configuring how my mail looks

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Expiring-Mail.html :PROPERTIES: :ID: 48255cfb-8300-4800-8c14-16c5a3525ac4 :END: info:gnus#Hiding Headers #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq gnus-treat-hide-boring-headers 'head) #+END_SRC :PROPERTIES: :ID: c4c986ea-5d81-49c0-9a1c-0d4049337525 :END:

nil (don't do this treatment)
t (do this treatment on all parts of the message)
head (do this treatment on the headers of the message)
first (do this treatment on the first body part)
last (do this on the last body part)

gravitars

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq gnus-treat-strip-multiple-blank-lines t) (setq gnus-treat-trailing-blank-lines t) ;; let's see some smiles in gnus (setq gnus-treat-display-smileys t) (setq gnus-treat-emphasize 'head) #+END_SRC :PROPERTIES: :ID: 71a27219-d9cc-404f-b9f1-eaaaf56e09ff :END:

This is supposed to show gravitars in my emails. I'm not sure how well it is working.

make firefox use gnus when you click on an email online

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq gnus-treat-from-gravatar 'head) #+END_SRC

Create a file called Emacs mail.

#+BEGIN_SRC sh :exports code :tangle no touch emacsmail #+END_SRC

#+BEGIN_SRC sh :results output :exports both :dir ~/programming/bash/ cat emacsmail #+END_SRC

#+RESULTS:

#!/bin/bash
emacsclient -c --eval "(browse-url-mail \"$@\")"

Then in Firefox's preferences you can specify what program to call when you click on an html email.

make Gnus open a new frame and call itself Gnus

:PROPERTIES: :ID: aeaedb21-4ec7-4618-bb66-a16a6e11a683 :END:

There some information about this here: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Creating-Frames.html#Creating-Frames https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Frame-Titles.html#Frame-Titles

Essentially, I'll need to call make-frame, specify that the new frame should have the WM_NAME Gnus. This means my window manager will think that it is a different program and is not Emacs.

I'll probably give it a different logo. And I might change the default theme. Then I'll add an awesome rule that makes it start in the second tag on startup. Very cool.

Currently I can't get gnus to use fastmail, so I'll pass on this.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (defun my/make-gnus-frame () "Make a gnus frame, and make the title Gnus and show the gnus bitmap image." (interactive) (when window-system (with-selected-frame (make-frame '( (name . "Gnus") (title . "Gnus") (icon-type . 'default-emacs-icon) )) (gnus))))

;; (add-hook 'after-init-hook 'make-gnus-frame)

;;(select-frame-by-name "Gnus") #+END_SRC

A bitmap image is stored in .bmp. The .xmp image is for X.

using gnus automatic scoring stuff

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 3992d090-c903-4fb3-a078-a3d2dc2203b3 :END:

Make gnus rank which articles are important to you. #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq gnus-use-adaptive-scoring t) #+END_SRC

I've been getting a weird error, hopefully this'll fix it

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 2832eeb8-7df9-415f-a802-5f80d0a559f3 :END:

Provide init-gnus

COMMENT some things I don't use at the moment

splitting up my inboxes

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq mail-user-agent 'sendmail-user-agent) #+END_SRC :PROPERTIES: :ID: 2d4021b8-caa2-43fd-9652-e9df2340f70e :END: #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (provide 'init-gnus) #+END_SRC Don't use gnus to split your incoming email. Gnus is slow at doing that and it's much easier to let the server to do the mail splitting.

I used to have this say nnmail-split methods, but I'm not using the nnmail backend! I'm using nnimap. Maybe this will actually let gnus properly split my mail into proper topics.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle no ;;(setq nnimap-split-method-default) (setq nnmail-split-methods '( ("Accrisoft Support" "^From:.*support@accrisoft.com.*$") ("Basecamp" "^From:.*notifications@basecamp.com.*$") ("arch" "^To:.*arch-general@archlinux.org.*$") ("emacs devel" "^To:.*emacs-devel@gnu.org.*$") ("emacs devel" "^CC:.*emacs-devel@gnu.org.*$") ("bug-hurd" "^To:.*bug-hurd@gnu.org.*$") ("emacs bugs" "^CC:.*@debbugs.gnu.org.*$") ("bug-hurd" "^Cc:.*bug-hurd@gnu.org.*$")))

#+END_SRC

This just creates topics but doesn't seem to support splitting of groups

(eval-after-load 'gnus-topic '(progn (setq gnus-message-archive-group '((format-time-string "sent.%Y"))) (setq gnus-topic-topology '(("Gnus" visible) (("misc" visible)) (("hotmail" visible nil nil)) (("dismail" visible nil nil))))

(setq gnus-topic-alist '(("Accrisoft Support") ("Basecamp") ("Arch") ("bug-hurd") ("hotmail" ; the key of topic "nnimap+hotmail:Inbox" "nnimap+hotmail:Drafts" "nnimap+hotmail:Sent") ("dismail" ; the key of topic "INBOX" "[Dismail]/Sent Mail" "Drafts") ("misc" ; the key of topic "nnfolder+archive:sent.2015-12" "nnfolder+archive:sent.2016" "nndraft:drafts") ("Gnus")))))

COMMENT Encrypting Email

Here follows a short rant:

Most email that you send, gets sent to a MUA, or mail user agent, which then sends it to another MUA, which gets read by the recipent of your email. HOWEVER, when one MUA sends an email to another MUA, that message is usually send in plain text. So when you send an email ANYONE can read it. ANYONE. To fix this, you have two options, you can encrypt your email yourself, or have some big server (that you don't own) do it for you. I'm all for encrypting it myself. If you are going to do this, I'd reccommend you read up on using gpg or Gnu Privacy Guard. It is the best free/libre encrypting software.

sign and encrypt messages

# default encryption and signing of stuff # https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Security.html#Security info:gnus#Signing and encrypting

Let's go ahead and sign and encrypt messages if I recognize the senders by default #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq mm-verify-option 'known mm-decrypt-option 'known) #+END_SRC

On reply encrypt my email

COMMENT Notification on new Mail

Let's reply and encrypt/sign messages if you know the user by default and if that message is encrypted https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Security.html#Security #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq gnus-message-replysign t gnus-message-replyencrypt t) #+END_SRC Have gnus alert you when a new mail arrives. #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle no (use-package gnus-desktop-notify ) (require 'gnus-desktop-notify) #+END_SRC

This is supposed to let me know when I get a new email, but it's not working. http://www.thregr.org/~wavexx/software/gnus-desktop-notify.el/index.html

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (gnus-desktop-notify-mode) (gnus-demon-add-scanmail) #+END_SRC

COMMENT gnus exit hook

;;alledigeely this next line is not necessary ;;(gnus-demon-init)


  (add-hook 'kill-emacs-hook #'(lambda ()
                                 (interactive)
                                 (when (get-buffer "*Group*")
                                   (gnus-group-exit))))

COMMENT checking for new news

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 15477e66-390a-4de9-955c-6290ce8937e5 :END: I got this code from John Wigley's .emacs

I'm not sure if this function will tell you if you have new news. I'm also pretty sure that it won't flash an awesome popup window to tell you you have new news.


  (defun gnus-demon-scan-news ()
    (interactive)
    (when gnus-plugged
      (let ((win (current-window-configuration))
            (gnus-read-active-file nil)
            (gnus-check-new-newsgroups nil)
            (gnus-verbose 2)
            (gnus-verbose-backends 5))
        (unwind-protect
            (save-window-excursion
              (when (gnus-alive-p)
                (with-current-buffer gnus-group-buffer
                  (gnus-group-get-new-news gnus-activate-level))))
          (set-window-configuration win)))))

  ;;
  ;;
  ;; (with-eval-after-load 'gnus
  ;;   (gnus-demon-add-handler 'gnus-demon-scan-news-2 5 2))

COMMENT Setting up Gnus to work with ebdb

:PROPERTIES: :ID: 6be3f385-5122-4b63-9e38-78fa4e48cb19 :END:

The last time I used ebdb, it created an annoying popup everytime I completed someone's email contact information. It is not helpful at all. #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (use-package ebdb ) (require 'ebdb-gnus) (require 'ebdb-message) #+END_SRC

COMMENT Setting up Gnus to work with bbdb

:PROPERTIES: :ID: a6305580-2518-4fb1-ba39-b685694516f3 :END:

get bbdb set up (insidious big brother database) it manages your mail contacts http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/bbdb.html#SEC13 When you are about to email someone you can easily start typing their name then press tab to try to complete the email address

Now you should be ready to go. Say ‘M-x bbdb RET RET’ to open a bbdb buffer showing all entries. Say ‘c’ to create a new entry, ‘b’ to search your BBDB and ‘C-o’ to add a new field to an entry. If you want to add a sender to the BBDB you can also just hit ‘:’ on the posting in the summary buffer and you are done. When you now compose a new mail, hit ‘TAB’ to cycle through know recipients.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (use-package bbdb :defer t) #+END_SRC

These are are needed to initial bbdb for gnus and message mode.

http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/12/emacs-30-day-challenge-glimpse-of-bbdb.html

Use bbdb when you read a message and when you send a message. Though I should probably only store someone's email address when I send an email. #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (require 'bbdb) (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message) #+END_SRC

Use bbdb in message mode. This lets you begin to type out someone's name and then tab to complete their email address.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (bbdb-insinuate-message) #+END_SRC

Initialize bbdb for gnus. #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'bbdb-insinuate-gnus) #+END_SRC

info:gnus#FAQ 5-7 how to use bbdb with gnus

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq bbdb/gnus-summary-prefer-real-names t bbdb-file "~/.config/emacs/bbdb" bbdb-default-area-code 765) #+END_SRC

Don't set the variable bbdb/news-auto-create-p to t. It creates bbdb records for all email that you read. BUT you might on occasion be fooded into reading junk mail.

Make bbdb pop up when you are using it in gnus. It'll pop up when you are sending an email. This is to let you know that gnus is saving a new record of that email address. Also make bbdb-save records without asking, because this is really nice.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (setq bbdb-use-pop-up t bbdb-offer-save 1 bbdb-update-records-p t) #+END_SRC

I'm not sure what this does.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp (bbdb-mua-auto-update-init 'message) #+END_SRC

COMMENT Asynchronous Email

This might not be worth it. Make gnus load more than 1 email in the background. This seems to slow stuff down in the initial connection, and it doesn't seem all that fast once everything is opened.

Some issues

(setq gnus-asynchronous t ;; fetch 15 messages by default gnus-use-article-prefetch 15)

I primarily use gnus for mailing lists, but mailing lists can be a little burdensome to use. There are several issues. All which can be solved by specifying several rules. ²

Your inbox gets flooded with emails from mailing lists

If you subscribe to several mailing lists then your inbox can easily get several hundred new emails a day. This is not fun.

The easiest way to filter mailing lists is to use the Header "List-Id". When you get an email from a mailing list, you'll have to look at the email headers. Gnus will help you do this. FIXME change M-x gnu toggle headers to the actual command that will show you the header List-Id. Then you can add an email filter. If this header is present, then store the email in a specific folder.

A decent work around is to subscribe to the mailing lists via the "+" extension. So instead of subscribing with email@dismail.de, one would subscribe to the emacs mailing list via email+emacs-devel@dismail.de. That gives you an easy way to filter email into appropriate folders.

Generally you want to use your mail server to filter emails. In your dismail.de account, you can specify mail filters to filter your email.

For example, if you subscribe to the guix-devel@gnu.org emailing list with the email address "steven+guix-devel@gnu.org", in your dismail folder you should specify a filter that looks for any To or CC that /contains/ "guix-devel@gnu.org", and if it finds it, dismail.de will move that email into a specified folder.

People reply to you and the mailing list

The method described here may not work. There is an option in the web administration that says avoid getting duplicate messages, but they may only work if you are subscribed to several email lists...

When you decide to reply to someone, they sometimes (always), send an email directly to you and they CC the mailing list. This means you get two emails! One in your inbox and one in your emacs-devel folder.

The easiest way to do this, is to log into the mailing list administration settings and specify that you do not want duplicate emails. If you do not know how to do this, keep reading:

You could add a rule that deletes mails sent to your inbox with your normal email AND that CCs a mailing list. This would look like:

email is sent to email@dismail.de

AND

email is CC to emacs-devel

delete the message.

Managing Spam

Now when someone replies to you, you only see one email. :PROPERTIES: :ID: c4f65821-d059-4f6d-ac7a-407e227e1bed :END:

Don't use gnus' spamming filters. You want your mail server (aka dismail.de), to deal with spam, NOT your email client. Your email client is generally super slow. They server is better at filtering spam.

email you send to the mailing list is marked unread

When you reply to someone on the mailing list, the email is sent to you as well. That email ends up in your emacs-devel folder. So when you open your email the next time, you will see that you have one unread message in your emacs-devel folder. When you open the folder, you will discover that you in fact sent that email, and you have already read it!

One way around this is to mark the message sent from you to emacs-devel as read. You can do this by saying

email is send to emacs-devel@gnu.org

AND

email is sent from steven@dismail.de

other good guides

mark email as read

https://github.com/gongzhitaao/GnusSolution

Footnotes

https://github.com/jwiegley/dot-emacs/blob/master/dot-gnus.el

I know Gnus is dumb. It should just show all of your email folders by default.
These issues can probably be resolved via Sieve mail filtering language much easier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_(mail_filtering_language)

init-gnus.org 41 KB Permalink History Raw

Gnus Quick Start

Telling Gnus who you are

If you need to use multiple email accounts

If your remote server has non standard options

Isn't IMAP slow and old school?

COMMENT local imap connection with dovecot (what the current maintainer of emacs does)

COMMENT So you'd rather use a maildir?

Starting Gnus for the first time

Some more information

Setting up Gnus

pretty obvious settings

Posting Styles

COMMENT polymode

Making Gnus prettier

use some org features inside message mode

archiving mail aka coping mail to the sent folder

Make gnus startup faster

Don't change gnu-read-active-file

Fixing the Summary Buffer

encrypted email

On reply encrypt my email

managing spam

Searching in Gnus

setting up email lists

Kill mail buffer after you send an email

scanning news with gnus daemon

Making gnus check if I want to add an attachment

Summary Buffer

ranking groups

displaying your topics when you enter gnus

read html mail

Expiring Mail

Delete mail marked expire-able after 30 days.

Auto expire v. total expire

deleting boring headers from email

automatically configuring how my mail looks

gravitars

make firefox use gnus when you click on an email online

make Gnus open a new frame and call itself Gnus

using gnus automatic scoring stuff

I've been getting a weird error, hopefully this'll fix it

Provide init-gnus

COMMENT some things I don't use at the moment

splitting up my inboxes

COMMENT Encrypting Email

sign and encrypt messages

On reply encrypt my email

COMMENT Notification on new Mail

COMMENT gnus exit hook

COMMENT checking for new news

COMMENT Setting up Gnus to work with ebdb

COMMENT Setting up Gnus to work with bbdb

COMMENT Asynchronous Email

Some issues

Your inbox gets flooded with emails from mailing lists

People reply to you and the mailing list

Managing Spam

email you send to the mailing list is marked unread

other good guides

Footnotes

init-gnus.org 41 KB

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