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10.7.2: Customization

• Q2.1 Custom Edit does not work under XEmacs

  The custom package has not been ported to XEmacs.

• Q2.2 How do I quote messages?

  I see lots of messages with quoted material in them. I am wondering how to have Gnus do it for me.

  This is Gnus, so there are a number of ways of doing this. You can use the built-in commands to do this. There are the F and R keys from the summary buffer which automatically include the article being responded to. These commands are also selectable as Followup and Yank and Reply and Yank in the Post menu.

  C-c C-y grabs the previous message and prefixes each line with ail-indentation-spaces spaces or mail-yank-prefix if that is non-nil, unless you have set your own mail-citation-hook, which will be called to to do the job.

  You might also consider the Supercite package, which allows for pretty arbitrarily complex quoting styles. Some people love it, some people hate it.

• Q2.3 How can I keep my nnvirtual:* groups sorted?

  How can I most efficiently arrange matters so as to keep my nnvirtual:* (etc) groups at the top of my group selection buffer, whilst keeping everything sorted in alphabetical order.

  If you don't subscribe often to new groups then the easiest way is to first sort the groups and then manually kill and yank the virtuals wherever you want them.

• Q2.4 Any good suggestions on stuff for an all.SCORE file?

  Here is a collection of suggestions from the Gnus mailing list.

  1. From ``Dave Disser'' <disser@sdd.hp.com>
     I like blasting anything without lowercase letters. Weeds out most of the make $$ fast, as well as the lame titles like ``IBM'' and ``HP-UX'' with no further description.

      (("Subject"
       ("^\\(Re: \\)?[^a-z]*$" -200 nil R)))
     

  2. From ``Peter Arius'' <arius@immd2.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
     The most vital entries in my (still young) all.SCORE:

     (("xref"
       ("alt.fan.oj-simpson" -1000 nil s))
      ("subject"
       ("\\<\\(make\\|fast\\|big\\)\\s-*\\(money\\|cash\\|bucks?\\)\\>" -1000 nil r)
       ("$$$$" -1000 nil s)))
     

  3. From ``Per Abrahamsen'' <abraham@dina.kvl.dk>
     

     (("subject"
       ;; CAPS OF THE WORLD, UNITE
       ("^..[^a-z]+$" -1 nil R)
       ;; $$$ Make Money $$$ (Try work)
       ("$" -1 nil s)
       ;; I'm important! And I have exclamation marks to prove it!
       ("!" -1 nil s)))
     

  4. From ``heddy boubaker'' <boubaker@cenatls.cena.dgac.fr>
     I would like to contribute with mine.

     (
      (read-only t)
      ("subject"
       ;; ALL CAPS SUBJECTS
       ("^\\([Rr][Ee]: +\\)?[^a-z]+$" -1 nil R)
       ;; $$$ Make Money $$$
       ("$$" -10 nil s)
       ;; Empty subjects are worthless!
       ("^ *\\([(<]none[>)]\\|(no subject\\( given\\)?)\\)? *$" -10 nil r)
       ;; Sometimes interesting announces occur!
       ("ANN?OU?NC\\(E\\|ING\\)" +10 nil r)
       ;; Some people think they're on mailing lists
       ("\\(un\\)?sub?scribe" -100 nil r)
       ;; Stop Micro$oft NOW!!
       ("\\(m\\(icro\\)?[s$]\\(oft\\|lot\\)?-?\\)?wind?\\(ows\\|aube\\|oze\\)?[- ]*\\('?95\\|NT\\|3[.]1\\|32\\)" -1001 nil r)
       ;; I've nothing to buy
       ("\\(for\\|4\\)[- ]*sale" -100 nil r)
       ;; SELF-DISCIPLINED people
       ("\\[[^a-z0-9 \t\n][^a-z0-9 \t\n]\\]" +100 nil r)
       )
      ("from"
       ;; To keep track of posters from my site
       (".dgac.fr" +1000 nil s))
      ("followup"
       ;; Keep track of answers to my posts
       ("boubaker" +1000 nil s))
      ("lines"
       ;; Some people have really nothing to say!!
       (1 -10 nil <=))
      (mark -100)
      (expunge -1000)
      )
     

  5. From ``Christopher Jones'' <cjones@au.oracle.com>
     The sample `all.SCORE' files from Per and boubaker could be augmented with:

     	(("subject"
     	  ;; No junk mail please!
     	  ("please ignore" -500 nil s)
     	  ("test" -500 nil e))
     	)
     

  6. From ``Brian Edmonds'' <edmonds@cs.ubc.ca>
     Augment any of the above with a fast method of scoring down excessively cross posted articles.

      ("xref"
       ;; the more cross posting, the exponentially worse the article
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -1 nil r)
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -2 nil r)
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -4 nil r)
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -8 nil r)
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -16 nil r)
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -32 nil r)
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -64 nil r)
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -128 nil r)
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -256 nil r)
       ("^xref: \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+ \\S-+" -512 nil r))
     

• Q2.5 What do I use to yank-through when replying?

  You should probably reply and followup with R and F, instead of r and f, which solves your problem. But you could try something like:

  (defconst mail-yank-ignored-headers
    "^.*:"
    "Delete these headers from old message when it's inserted in a reply.")
  

• Q2.6 I don't like the default WWW browser

  Now when choosing an URL Gnus starts up a W3 buffer, I would like it to always use Netscape (I don't browse in text-mode ;-).

  1. Activate `Customize...' from the `Help' menu.
  2. Scroll down to the `WWW Browser' field.
  3. Click `mouse-2' on `WWW Browser'.
  4. Select `Netscape' from the pop up menu.
  5. Press `C-c C-c'

  If you are using XEmacs then to specify Netscape do

    (setq gnus-button-url 'gnus-netscape-open-url)
  

• Q2.7 What, if any, relation is between ``ask-server'' and ``(setq gnus-read-active-file 'some)''?

  In order for Gnus to show you the complete list of newsgroups, it will either have to either store the list locally, or ask the server to transmit the list. You enable the first with

          (setq gnus-save-killed-list t)
  

  and the second with

          (setq gnus-read-active-file t)
  

  If both are disabled, Gnus will not know what newsgroups exists. There is no option to get the list by casting a spell.

• Q2.8 Moving between groups is slow.

  Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
  

  Do you call define-key or something like that in one of the summary mode hooks? This would force Emacs to recalculate the keyboard shortcuts. Removing the call should speed up M-x gnus-summary-mode RET by a couple of orders of magnitude. You can use

  (define-key gnus-summary-mode-map KEY COMMAND)
  

  in your `.gnus' instead.

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