All Gnus path variables will be initialized from this variable, which defaults to `~/'.

Most Gnus storage path variables will be initialized from this variable, which defaults to the `SAVEDIR' environment variable, or `~/News/' if that variable isn't set.

Note that Gnus is mostly loaded when the `.gnus.el' file is read. This means that other directory variables that are initialized from this variable won't be set properly if you set this variable in `.gnus.el'. Set this variable in `.emacs' instead.

Not related to the above variable at all---this variable says what the default directory of all Gnus buffers should be. If you issue commands like C-x C-f, the prompt you'll get starts in the current buffer's default directory. If this variable is nil (which is the default), the default directory will be the default directory of the buffer you were in when you started Gnus.

This variable is an integer between zero and ten. The higher the value, the more messages will be displayed. If this variable is zero, Gnus will never flash any messages, if it is seven (which is the default), most important messages will be shown, and if it is ten, Gnus won't ever shut up, but will flash so many messages it will make your head swim.

This variable works the same way as gnus-verbose, but it applies to the Gnus backends instead of Gnus proper.

When the backends read straight heads of articles, they all try to read as little as possible. This variable (default 4096) specifies the absolute max length the backends will try to read before giving up on finding a separator line between the head and the body. If this variable is nil, there is no upper read bound. If it is t, the backends won't try to read the articles piece by piece, but read the entire articles. This makes sense with some versions of ange-ftp or efs.

This variable (default 2048) says how big a piece of each article to read when doing the operation described above.

This is an alist that says how to translate characters in file names. For instance, if `:' is invalid as a file character in file names on your system (you OS/2 user you), you could say something like:

(setq nnheader-file-name-translation-alist
      '((?: . ?_)))

In fact, this is the default value for this variable on OS/2 and MS Windows (phooey) systems.

This is a list of properties to use to hide ``invisible'' text. It is (invisible t intangible t) by default on most systems, which makes invisible text invisible and intangible.

A hook called before parsing headers. It can be used, for instance, to gather statistics on the headers fetched, or perhaps you'd like to prune some headers. I don't see why you'd want that, though.

String used to separate two shell commands. The default is `;'.