Alternative Approaches
Binary Groups
Some newsreaders (like nn
and, uhm, Netnews
on VM/CMS) use
a two-phased reading interface. The user first marks in a summary
buffer the articles she wants to read. 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 provides one additional command for switching to the summary buffer.
Here are the available keystrokes when using pick mode:
. |
Pick the article or thread on the current line
( |
SPACE |
Scroll the summary buffer up one page ( |
u |
Unpick the thread or article
( |
RET |
Start reading the picked articles ( |
All the normal summary mode commands are still available in the
pick-mode, with the exception of u. However ! is available
which is mapped to the same function
gnus-summary-tick-article-forward
.
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 gnus-mark-unpicked-articles-as-read
is non-nil
, mark
all unpicked articles as read. The default is nil
.
The summary line format in pick mode is slightly different from the
standard format. At the beginning of each line the line number is
displayed. The pick mode line format is controlled by the
gnus-summary-pick-line-format
variable (see Formatting Variables). It accepts the same format specs that
gnus-summary-line-format
does (see Summary Buffer Lines).