Gnus Manual. Node: Hard Picons

PREVEasy Picons UPPicons NEXTPicon Useless Configuration

8.15.1.4: Hard Picons

Gnus can display picons for you as you enter and leave groups and articles. It knows how to interact with three sections of the picons database. Namely, it can display the picons newsgroup pictures, author's face picture(s), and the authors domain. To enable this feature, you need to select where to get the picons from, and where to display them.

gnus-picons-database

The location of the picons database. Should point to a directory containing the `news', `domains', `users' (and so on) subdirectories. This is only useful if gnus-picons-piconsearch-url is nil. Defaults to `/usr/local/faces/'.

gnus-picons-piconsearch-url

The URL for the web picons search engine. The only currently known engine is `http://www.cs.indiana.edu:800/piconsearch'. To workaround network delays, icons will be fetched in the background. If this is nil 'the default), then picons are fetched from local database indicated by gnus-picons-database.

gnus-picons-display-where

Where the picon images should be displayed. It is picons by default (which by default maps to the buffer `*Picons*'). Other valid places could be article, summary, or `*scratch*' for all I care. Just make sure that you've made the buffer visible using the standard Gnus window configuration routines---see Windows Configuration.

gnus-picons-group-excluded-groups

Groups that are matched by this regexp won't have their group icons displayed.

Note: If you set gnus-use-picons to t, it will set up your window configuration for you to include the picons buffer.

Now that you've made those decision, you need to add the following functions to the appropriate hooks so these pictures will get displayed at the right time.

gnus-article-display-picons

Looks up and displays the picons for the author and the author's domain in the gnus-picons-display-where buffer. Should be added to the gnus-article-display-hook.

gnus-picons-article-display-x-face

Decodes and displays the X-Face header if present. This function should be added to gnus-article-display-hook.

Note: You must append them to the hook, so make sure to specify 't' for the append flag of add-hook: 

(add-hook 'gnus-article-display-hook 'gnus-article-display-picons t)
PREVEasy Picons UPPicons NEXTPicon Useless Configuration