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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.265 (put 'rmail 'disabled t) ; avoid mbox destruction 159: How do I make Emacs automatically start my mail/news reader? Example: emacs -f gnus Also: alias gnus 'emacs -f gnus' It is probably unwise to automatically start your mail or news reader from your .emacs file. This would cause problems if you needed to run two copies of Emacs at one time. Also, this would make it difficult for you to start Emacs quickly when you needed to. 160: How do I read news under Emacs? There are at least three news reading packages that operate inside Emacs. `rnews' comes with Emacs. GNUS and Gnews come separately. rnews will be replaced by GNUS in Emacs 19. rnews works only with a local news spool directory. Both GNUS and Gnews handle reading news remotely via NNTP in addition to reading from a local news spool. GNUS supports reading mail stored in MH folders or articles saved by GNUS. Gnews is styled after `rn' and seems to work like RMAIL. GNUS feels more like VM. People have complained that GNUS uses a lot of CPU time (it does). Some people have complained that Gnews is slower than GNUS. For more information about GNUS, see question 108. Gnews was written by Matthew P. Wiener <weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu>. The latest version seems to be 2.0, posted October 3, 1988. Matthew posted some fixes on October 26, 1988. Gnews does not appear to have been supported after this date. In particular, it has been reported that Gnews does not work with Emacs 18.57. There is a newsgroup for Gnews called gnu.emacs.gnews. 161: Why does `rnews' say "No News is good news" when there is news? rnews doesn't speak NNTP. You may need to use GNUS or Gnews. 162: Why doesn't GNUS work anymore via NNTP? There is a bug in NNTP version 1.5.10, such that when multiple requests are sent to the NNTP server, the server only handles the first one before blocking waiting for more input which never comes. NNTP version 1.5.11 claims to fix this. You can work around the bug inside Emacs like this: (setq nntp-maximum-request 1) I also have a patch for NNTP 1.5.10 by Mike Pelletier <stealth@engin.umich.edu> that is based on the timeout code that was in 1.5.9. However, please try to upgrade to 1.5.11 first. You can find out what version of NNTP your news server is running by telnetting to the NNTP port (usually 119) on the news server machine (ie., `telnet server-machine 119'). The server should give its version number in the welcome message. Type `quit' to get out. 163: How do I view text with embedded underlining (eg., ClariNews)? Underlining appears like this: _^Hu_^Hn_^Hd_^He_^Hr_^Hl_^Hi_^Hn_^Hi_^Hn_^Hg You can destructively remove underlining with M-x ununderline-region. For ClariNews articles, clari-clean.el by David N. Blank-Edelman <dnb@meshugge.media.mit.edu> will remove both underlining and overstriking automatically. 164: When I try to post a long article in GNUS (about 10K or longer), I get the error, "Writing to process: no more processes, nntpd" Upgrade to Emacs 18.58. 165: How do I save all the items of a multi-part posting in GNUS? Use gnus-mark.el by Jamie Zawinski <jwz@lucid.com>. 166: Why does GNUS put the subjects in replies beyond the 80th column? This is a feature. If you set gnus-thread-hide-subject to non-nil, GNUS will only display the subject of the first posting in a thread, even if some of the replies use different subjects. It hides the subjects by putting them past the edge of the window and setting truncate lines to t. If your screen looks messed up, then for some reason truncate-lines in your `*Subject*' buffer has been set to nil. It should be set to t. (I have an enhancement to GNUS 3.13 that will make it only hide the subject of a posting when it is unchanged from the followed-up-to posting. Thus, you can use the subject hiding feature and still know when someone changes the subject. (I have forgotten who originally gave me the idea for this.)) 167: Why is GNUS so slow to start up? GNUS does several things that take quadratic time of the number of newsgroups that are listed in .newsrc. The quick fix for this is to remove all the newsgroups in which you have no interest from your .newrc file by using GNUS's C-k command in the `*Newsgroup*' buffer after displaying all newsgroups with the L command. If you were to directly edit your .newsrc to remove the newsgroups, GNUS would add them back. GNUS uses a quadratic algorithm to check for duplicates when the .newsrc file is newer than the .newsrc.el file (ie., you edited your .newsrc). GNUS uses a quadratic algorithm to check for new newsgroups every time it connects to the news server. {There may be other quadratic algorithms that I am not aware of.} You can speed up GNUS by using the C-k command in the *Newsgroup* buffer to remove newsgroups from your .newsrc file. Of course, GNUS will run faster if you make sure it is byte-compiled. Felix Lee wrote some enhancements called `gnus-speedups.el' that fix some + of the problems. See the Emacs Lisp Archive. + 168: How do I catch up all newsgroups in GNUS? In the `*Newsgroup*' buffer, type the following magical incantation: M-< C-x ( C-@ c y C-u C-@ C-e C-f C-f M-0 C-x ) Leave off the "M-<" if you only want to catch up from point to the end of the `*Newsgroup' buffer. 169: Why can't I kill in GNUS on the Newsgroups/Keywords/Control line? GNUS 3.14.1 will complain that the `Newsgroups:', `Keywords:', and `Control:' headers are `Unknown header field's. For the `Newsgroups:' header, there is an easy workaround: kill on the `Xref' header instead, which will be present on any cross-posted article. If you really want to kill on one of these headers, you can do it like this: (gnus-kill nil "^Newsgroups: .*\$bad\\.group\\|worse\\.group\$") Various people (eg., Greg Holley <holley@acuson.com>) have posted solutions to allow more efficient killing on these headers than the preceding solution. Masanobu Umeda plans to fix this problem. 170: How do I get rid of flashing messages in GNUS for slow connections? GNUS outputs "NNTP: Reading..." message and then clears them, over and over. In version 3.14.1 there is a variable named nntp-debug-read that can help. Johan Vromans <jv@mh.nl> wrote a fix. Others have also written fixes. 171: Why is catch up slow in Gnews/GNUS? Because GNUS is marking crosspostings read. {I think it should do this at the time the article is read to spread out the load. Maybe someone will write the code to do this.} 172: Why does GNUS hang for a long time when posting? David Lawrence <tale@uunet.uu.net> explains: ! ! The problem is almost always interaction between NNTP and C News. NNTP ! POST asks C News's inews to not background itself but rather hang around ! and give its exit status so it knows whether the post was successful. ! (That wait will on some systems not return the exit status of the ! waited for job is a different sort of problem.) It ends up taking a ! long time because inews is calling relaynews, which often waits for ! another relaynews to free the lock on the news system so it can file the ! article. ! ! My preferred solution is to change inews to not call relaynews, but ! rather use newsspool. This loses some error-catching functionality, but ! is for the most part safe as inews will detect a lot of the errors on ! its own. The C News folks have sped up inews, too, so speed should look ! better to most folks as that update propagates around. ! 173: Why don't my news postings in GNUS get past the local machine? Three possible reasons: local distribution, C News date problem (see question 174, and the path problem. This piece of code may fix the path ! problem for you: ! ! (setq gnus-use-generic-path t) ! 174: Why is the GNUS-generated `Date:' header invalid? GNUS generates `Date:' headers without time zones. C-News's `inews' doesn't replace it with a valid header, but will generate it if not already there. If it is invalid, the article will not be forwarded properly. Quick fix: (defun gnus-inews-date () nil) I think this is fixed in GNUS 3.14.1 if you set gnus-news-system {?} to + Cnews. + 175: Why doesn't GNUS generate the `Lines:' header? GNUS was written for B news, which would generate the `Lines:' header. C news doesn't. There is a comment in C news's `inews' that you can uncomment to enable this functionality. Or you can have GNUS generate the header, for example: ;; idea by jbryans@beach.csulb.edu (Jack Bryans) (defun add-lines-header () ;; Count the number of lines in the current posting and insert the ;; header line Lines into the message. (save-excursion (goto-char (point-min)) (if (search-forward "\n\n") ;; ***** I suspect this is wrong ***** (let ((lines (count-lines (point) (point-max)))) (forward-line -1) (insert-string "Lines: " lines "\n"))))) Mike Williams <mike-w@cs.aukuni.ac.nz> has written something similar. Ronald Florence <ron@mlfarm.com> has a patch for GNUS that makes it calculate the `Lines:' header for incoming articles when necessary that works for sites with local news spools. David Lawrence <tale@uunet.uu.net> says that GNUS 3.14.1 generates Lines + if gnus-news-system is Cnews. + 176: Why do I get "Cannot open load file" "nntp" when compiling GNUS? Specifically, the error message is this: Error occurred processing gnus.el: File error (("Cannot open load file" "nntp")) This means that nntp.el is not in Emacs's load-path, which is easy to happen when compiling using the Makefile. Easiest solution: set EMACSLOADPATH in Makefile (idea from Glenn Gribble <glenn@netcom.com>): EMACSLOADPATH=/usr/local/emacs/lisp:. ELC= env EMACSLOADPATH=$(EMACSLOADPATH) emacs -batch -f batch-byte-compile Another solution, in hack.el put this: (defun gross-hack () (setq load-path (cons "/directory" load-path))) Then in Makefile: ELC= emacs -batch -l hack.el -f gross-hack -f batch-byte-compile 177: How do I kill all articles in GNUS but those matching a pattern? Example: ;; kill everything (gnus-kill "subject" "" nil nil) ;; then restore stuff by our favorite poster (gnus-kill "from" "good-guy" (function (lambda () (if (eq ?X (char-after (save-excursion (beginning-of-line 1) (point)))) (gnus-Subject-clear-mark-forward 1)))) t) Xref: bloom-picayune.mit.edu news.announce.newusers:919 news.answers:3563 Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!darwin.sura.net!gatech!purdue!spaf From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.answers Subject: Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette Message-ID: <spaf-emily_719471681@cs.purdue.edu> Date: 19 Oct 92 05:14:42 GMT Expires: 18 Dec 92 17:14:41 GMT Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca Followup-To: news.newusers.questions Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ. Lines: 387 Approved: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU Supersedes: <spaf-emily_716962653@cs.purdue.edu> Original-author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1 Last-change: 30 Nov 91 by brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) **NOTE: this is intended to be satirical. If you do not recognize it as such, consult a doctor or professional comedian. The recommendations in this article should recognized for what they are -- admonitions about what NOT to do. "Dear Emily Postnews" Emily Postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour, gives her advice on how to act on the net. ============================================================================ Dear Miss Postnews: How long should my signature be? -- verbose@noisy A: Dear Verbose: Please try and make your signature as long as you can. It's much more important than your article, of course, so try to have more lines of signature than actual text. Try to include a large graphic made of ASCII characters, plus lots of cute quotes and slogans. People will never tire of reading these pearls of wisdom again and again, and you will soon become personally associated with the joy each reader feels at seeing yet another delightful repeat of your signature. Be sure as well to include a complete map of USENET with each signature, to show how anybody can get mail to you from any site in the world. Be sure to include Internet gateways as well. Also tell people on your own site how to mail to you. Give independent addresses for Internet, UUCP, and BITNET, even if they're all the same. Aside from your reply address, include your full name, company and organization. It's just common courtesy -- after all, in some newsreaders people have to type an *entire* keystroke to go back to the top of your article to see this information in the header. By all means include your phone number and street address in every single article. People are always responding to usenet articles with phone calls and letters. It would be silly to go to the extra trouble of including this information only in articles that need a response by conventional channels! ------ Dear Emily: Today I posted an article and forgot to include my signature. What should I do? -- forgetful@myvax A: Dear Forgetful: Rush to your terminal right away and post an article that says, "Oops, I forgot to post my signature with that last article. Here it is." Since most people will have forgotten your earlier article, (particularly since it dared to be so boring as to not have a nice, juicy signature) this will remind them of it. Besides, people care much more about the signature anyway. See the previous letter for more important details. Also, be sure to include your signature TWICE in each article. That way you're sure people will read it. ------ Dear Ms. Postnews: I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site. What should I do? -- eager@beaver.dam A: Dear Eager: No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people read. Say, "This is for John Smith. I couldn't get mail through so I'm posting it. All others please ignore." This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through Usenet maps or looking for alternate routes. Just think, if you couldn't distribute your message to 30,000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person. This can cost as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call! And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's money distributing the message then for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight letter, or even 29 cents on a stamp! Don't forget. The world will end if your message doesn't get through, so post it as many places as you can. ------ Q: What about a test message? A: It is important, when testing, to test the entire net. Never test merely a subnet distribution when the whole net can be done. Also put "please ignore" on your test messages, since we all know that everybody always skips a message with a line like that. Don't use a subject like "My sex is female but I demand to be addressed as male." because such articles are read in depth by all USEnauts. ------ Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What should I do? A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the correction. And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform the whole net right away! ------ Q: I read an article that said, "reply by mail, I'll summarize." What should I do? A: Post your response to the whole net. That request applies only to dumb people who don't have something interesting to say. Your postings are much more worthwhile than other people's, so it would be a waste to reply by mail. ------ Q: I collected replies to an article I wrote, and now it's time to summarize. What should I do? A: Simply concatenate all the articles together into a big file and post that. On USENET, this is known as a summary. It lets people read all the replies without annoying newsreaders getting in the way. Do the same when summarizing a vote. ------ Q: I saw a long article that I wish to rebut carefully, what should I do? A: Include the entire text with your article, particularly the signature, and include your comments closely packed between the lines. Be sure to post, and not mail, even though your article looks like a reply to the original. Everybody *loves* to read those long point-by-point debates, especially when they evolve into name-calling and lots of "Is too!" -- "Is not!" -- "Is too, twizot!" exchanges. Be sure to follow-up everything, and never let another person get in the last word on a net debate. Why, if people let other people have the last word, then discussions would actually stop! Remember, other net readers aren't nearly as clever as you, and if somebody posts something wrong, the readers can't possibly realize that on their own without your elucidations. If somebody gets insulting in their net postings, the best response is to get right down to their level and fire a return salvo. When I read one net person make an insulting attack on another, I always immediately take it as gospel unless a rebuttal is posted. It never makes me think less of the insulter, so it's your duty to respond. ------ Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? A: Pick as many as you can, so that you get the widest audience. After all, the net exists to give you an audience. Ignore those who suggest you should only use groups where you think the article is highly appropriate. Pick all groups where anybody might even be slightly interested. Always make sure followups go to all the groups. In the rare event that you post a followup which contains something original, make sure you expand the list of groups. Never include a "Followup-to:" line in the header, since some people might miss part of the valuable discussion in the fringe groups. ------ Q: How about an example? A: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try news.admin. If not, use news.misc. The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.geo.fluids. He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also interested in stars. And of course comp.dcom.telecom because he was born in the birthplace of the telephone. And because he's Canadian, post to soc.culture.Ontario.southwestern. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.) You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this. ------ Q: How do I create a newsgroup? A: The easiest way goes something like "inews -C newgroup ....", and while that will stir up lots of conversation about your new newsgroup, it might not be enough. First post a message in news.groups describing the group. This is a "call for discussion." (If you see a call for discussion, immediately post a one line message saying that you like or dislike the group.) When proposing the group, pick a name with a TLA (three-letter acronym) that will be understood only by "in" readers of the group. After the call for discussion, post the call for flames, followed by a call for arguments about the name and a call for run-on puns. Eventually make a call for "votes." USENET is a democracy, so voters can now all post their votes to ensure they get to all 30,000 machines instead of just the person counting. Every few days post a long summary of all the votes so that people can complain about bad mailers and double votes. It means you'll be more popular and get lots of mail. At the end of 21 days you can post the vote results so that people can argue about all the technical violations of the guidelines you made. Blame them on the moderator-of-the-week for news.announce.newgroups. Then your group might be created. To liven up discussion, choose a good cross-match for your hierarchy and group. For example, comp.race.formula1 or soc.vlsi.design would be good group names. If you want your group created quickly, include an interesting word like "sex" or "activism." To avoid limiting discussion, make the name as broad as possible, and don't forget that TLA. If possible, count votes from a leaf site with a once-a-week polled connection to botswanavax. Schedule the vote during your relay site's head crash if possible. Under no circumstances use the trial group method, because it eliminates the discussion, flame, pun, voting and guideline-violation accusation phases, thus taking all the fun out of it. To create an ALT group, simply issue the creation command. Then issue an rmgroup and some more newgroup messages to save other netters the trouble of doing that part. ------ Q: I cant spell worth a dam. I hope your going too tell me what to do? A: Don't worry about how your articles look. Remember it's the message that counts, not the way it's presented. Ignore the fact that sloppy spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that soiled clothing would when addressing an audience. ------ Q: How should I pick a subject for my articles? A: Keep it short and meaningless. That way people will be forced to actually read your article to find out what's in it. This means a bigger audience for you, and we all know that's what the net is for. If you do a followup, be sure and keep the same subject, even if it's totally meaningless and not part of the same discussion. If you don't, you won't catch all the people who are looking for stuff on the original topic, and that means less audience for you. ------ Q: What sort of tone should I take in my article? A: Be as outrageous as possible. If you don't say outlandish things, and fill your article with libelous insults of net people, you may not stick out enough in the flood of articles to get a response. The more insane your posting looks, the more likely it is that you'll get lots of followups. The net is here, after all, so that you can get lots of attention. If your article is polite, reasoned and to the point, you may only get mailed replies. Yuck! ------ Q: The posting software suggested I had too long a signature and too many lines of included text in my article. What's the best course? A: Such restrictions were put in the software for no reason at all, so don't even try to figure out why they might apply to your article. Turns out most people search the net to find nice articles that consist of the complete text of an earlier article plus a few lines. In order to help these people, fill your article with dummy original lines to get past the restrictions. Everybody will thank you for it. For your signature, I know it's tough, but you will have to read it in with the editor. Do this twice to make sure it's firmly in there. By the way, to show your support for the free distribution of information, be sure to include a copyright message forbidding transmission of your article to sites whose USENET politics you don't like. Also, if you do have a lot of free time and want to trim down the text in your article, be sure to delete some of the attribution lines so that it looks like the original author of -- say -- a plea for world peace actually wrote the followup calling for the nuking of Bermuda. ------ Q: They just announced on the radio that the United States has invaded Iraq. Should I post? A: Of course. The net can reach people in as few as 3 to 5 days. It's the perfect way to inform people about such news events long after the broadcast networks have covered them. As you are probably the only person to have heard the news on the radio, be sure to post as soon as you can. ------ Q: I have this great joke. You see, these three strings walk into a bar... A: Oh dear. Don't spoil it for me. Submit it to rec.humor, and post it to the moderator of rec.humor.funny at the same time. I'm sure he's never seen that joke. ------ Q: What computer should I buy? An Atari ST or an Amiga? A: Cross post that question to the Atari and Amiga groups. It's an interesting and novel question that I am sure they would love to investigate in those groups. There is no need to read the groups in advance or examine the "frequently asked question" lists to see if the topic has already been dealt with. In fact, you don't need to read the group at all, and you can tell people that in your query. ------ Q: What about other important questions? How should I know when to post? A: Always post them. It would be a big waste of your time to find a knowledgeable user in one of the groups and ask through private mail if the topic has already come up. Much easier to bother thousands of people with the same question. ------ Q: Somebody just posted a query to the net, and I want to get the answer too. What should I do? A: Immediately post a following, including the complete text of the query. At the bottom add, "Me too!" If somebody else has done this, follow up their article and add "Me three," or whatever number is appropriate. Don't forget your full signature. After all, if you just mail the original poster and ask for a copy of the answers, you will simply clutter the poster's mailbox, and save people who do answer the question the joyful duty of noting all the "me (n)s" and sending off all the multiple copies. ------ Q: What is the measure of a worthwhile group? A: Why, it's Volume, Volume, Volume. Any group that has lots of noise in it must be good. Remember, the higher the volume of material in a group, the higher percentage of useful, factual and insightful articles you will find. In fact, if a group can't demonstrate a high enough volume, it should be deleted from the net. ------ Q: Emily, I'm having a serious disagreement with somebody on the net. I tried complaints to his sysadmin, organizing mail campaigns, called for his removal from the net and phoning his employer to get him fired. Everybody laughed at me. What can I do? A: Go to the daily papers. Most modern reporters are top-notch computer experts who will understand the net, and your problems, perfectly. They will print careful, reasoned stories without any errors at all, and surely represent the situation properly to the public. The public will also all act wisely, as they are also fully cognizant of the subtle nature of net society.