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Chapter 6: Select Methods

A foreign group is a group not read by the usual (or default) means. It could be, for instance, a group from a different NNTP server, it could be a virtual group, or it could be your own personal mail group.

A foreign group (or any group, really) is specified by a name and a select method. To take the latter first, a select method is a list where the first element says what backend to use (e.g. nntp, nnspool, nnml) and the second element is the server name. There may be additional elements in the select method, where the value may have special meaning for the backend in question.

One could say that a select method defines a virtual server---so we do just that (see The Server Buffer).

The name of the group is the name the backend will recognize the group as.

For instance, the group `soc.motss' on the NNTP server `some.where.edu' will have the name `soc.motss' and select method (nntp "some.where.edu"). Gnus will call this group `nntp+some.where.edu:soc.motss', even though the nntp backend just knows this group as `soc.motss'.

The different methods all have their peculiarities, of course.

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