Test email

[Rafi Khan]

Hi all,

I am new to gnus and mailing lists and have just setup Emacs with GNUS
and my email account.

This is just a test email so that I can confirm things are setup as
intended.

Further, is there a guide I can read to learn more about how to use
mailing lists? There's a lot of terminology in the gnus documentation
which I am unfamiliar with such as "post", "news" and "group". Some of
this can be inferred from the documentation and context but others are
not so clear to me.

Thanks,
Rafi Khan

[Winston]

Post by Rafi Khan
I am new to gnus and mailing lists and have just setup Emacs with GNUS
and my email account.

...

Post by Rafi Khan
Further, is there a guide I can read to learn more about how to use
mailing lists? There's a lot of terminology in the gnus documentation
which I am unfamiliar with such as "post", "news" and "group".

It's not email and not a mailing list, it's something called USENET.
There are articles and "newsgroups" and one "posts" articles to a
newsgroup. People subscribed to the newsgroup see the articles after a
small bit of propagation delay.

In some regards it's like social media, but it's a topic-oriented,
worldwide distributed system, rather than being centralized by a single
company like what most people think of when they hear the term "social
media".
-WBE

[Alberto Luaces]

Post by Rafi Khan
Hi all,
I am new to gnus and mailing lists and have just setup Emacs with GNUS
and my email account.
This is just a test email so that I can confirm things are setup as
intended.

Congratulations, it is working!

Post by Rafi Khan
Further, is there a guide I can read to learn more about how to use
mailing lists? There's a lot of terminology in the gnus documentation
which I am unfamiliar with such as "post", "news" and "group". Some of
this can be inferred from the documentation and context but others are
not so clear to me.

I don't know any, but I guess you are welcome to ask these things as you
need them.

That terminology comes from NNTP, which translated to today's terms
(although it is still in use, by the way) would be the (roughly)
equivalent of a forum read by "email". "Post" is still a post, a
message like this one; "news" would be the whole forum, hosting "groups"
— its channels, or mailing lists in email terms.

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

I am new to gnus and mailing lists and have just setup Emacs with GNUS and my email account.

Welcome!

This is just a test email so that I can confirm things are setup as intended.
Further, is there a guide I can read to learn more about how to use mailing lists?

Lots of such guides were accumulated over the Net for decades, but I do not know any, thatÊŒs worth reading. They commonly contain not very relevant info, that overwhelm the newcomer, often — local-specific and outdated info, and sometimes — simply bullshit.

Basically, there is nothing to explain: mailing lists are supposed to be naturally familiar for anyone who is familiar with mail, that is simply to anyone. And despite all the joint efforts of some list-hosters, mail useragent designers and individuals to derail it, they are mostly indeed are.

The only mistake UI designers succeeded to teach users, though, is to to command ‘Reply to sender only’ instead of ‘Reply to all’, which is of course is not what you want while discussing things publicly. Yet in too many MUAs the latter in too concealed. Gnus, of course, is not one those, so you are safe here.

There's a lot of terminology in the gnus documentation ‹ › Some of this can be inferred from the documentation and context, but others are not so clear to me.

Feel free to ask.

[Boris Dorestand]

[...]

This is just a test email so that I can confirm things are setup as intended.

You are posting via Gmane, are not you?

Nice that you checked where the OP was coming from. It happens to be
highly relevant as the OP is primarily interested in understanding the
context in which the OP is. The OP is indeed in the mailing list
context, since the OP is most likely posting to one. People assumed
otherwise likely due to the OP's terminology. We should now explain the
more abstract nature of these message exchanges: multiple media, a
single channel.

[Rafi Khan]

Post by Alberto Luaces
Congratulations, it is working!

Awesome :D

Post by Alberto Luaces
I don't know any, but I guess you are welcome to ask these things as you
need them.

Thanks!

So a few questions already.

1. I am using Gmail as the backend and received Dmitry Alexandrov's
reply in my inbox, but for some reason your reply wasn't there. I am
replying to you from the gmane group in gnus.

2. What is the difference between replying and forwarding in mailing
lists?

Should I be doing "F" or "R". They seems similar when the compose window
is created, hence my confusion.

Thanks,
Rafi

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

Is there a way for me to get the mailing list address for a gmane news group from inside gnus

Yes, but itÊŒs not implemented. So try that instead: navigate to some message, that was posted there and only there (no crossposts) and command A M (M-x gnus-mailing-list-insinuate) — Gnus will try to populate ‘list-to’ group parameter from ‘List-Post’ header.

so I can compose directly that way?

If there is no ‘List-Post’ header, there is still nothing hard in guessing it from ‘To’ / ‘Cc’ headers, so:

(setq gnus-add-to-list t)

and copy-paste it for the first time manually [1].

[1] (info "(gnus) Group Parameters").

[Adam Sjøgren]

Post by Rafi Khan
1. I am using Gmail as the backend and received Dmitry Alexandrov's
reply in my inbox, but for some reason your reply wasn't there. I am
replying to you from the gmane group in gnus.

It's a common "problem" with mailing lists: Some people reply both to
the mailing list and directly to the person, some people only reply to
the mailing list.

The first strategy is useful if the person writing on the mailing list
isn't subscribed to it. (I find that an odd thing to do, and with Gmane,
where following a mailing list is very low friction, even more so).

There are some headers you can set to indicate your preference, but not
many email clients understand them.

Post by Rafi Khan
2. What is the difference between replying and forwarding in mailing
lists?

I think you are thinking of R.eply and F.ollow up?

For newsgroups (e.g. Gmane) R sends to the author only, and F sends to
the group. (S W sends to both.)

For email, you can think of R in Gnus as "Reply", and F as "Reply All".

It's more complicated than that (of course, this is Emacs), but it's a
reasonable first approximation.

F and R quote the previous email, f and r don't.

I usually want to follow up in the newsgroup, rather than replying only
to the author, so to be reminded if I hit the wrong button, I've (asked
around, and somebody provided this small snippet to) add to my ~/.gnus:

; Warn if replying from a newsgroup:
(defadvice gnus-summary-reply (around asjo-reply-in-news activate)
(interactive)
(when (or (not (gnus-news-group-p gnus-newsgroup-name))
(y-or-n-p "Really reply? "))
ad-do-it))

which makes Gnus ask me if I really want to email the author instead of
following up in the newsgroup, if I happen to.


Best reards,

Adam

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

1. I am using Gmail as the backend and received Dmitry Alexandrov's reply in my inbox, but for some reason your reply wasn't there.

He have not addressed you for some reason, cf. ‘To’ and (absent) ‘Cc’ headers in his mail. While they are merely informational, they are usually true.

2. What is the difference between replying and forwarding in mailing lists?
Should I be doing "F" or "R".

‘r’ and ‘R’¹ are above-mentioned ‘reply to sender only’ commands. Indeed, docstring (<f1> k r) is unclear:

| (gnus-summary-reply &optional YANK WIDE VERY-WIDE)
|
| Start composing a mail reply to the current message.
| If prefix argument YANK is non-nil, the original article is yanked
| automatically.
| If WIDE, make a wide reply.
| If VERY-WIDE, make a very wide reply.

Manual entry (<f1> K r) is fine, though:

| ‘S r’
| ‘r’
| Mail a reply to the author of the current article
| (‘gnus-summary-reply’).

In other words, these are rarely needed commands. The need to drop extra recipients from reply is rare, and even in these cases itÊŒs often easier just to purge ‘Cc’ line.


As for ‘f’ and ‘F’, they do _not_ stay for ‘forwarding’, but for ‘following-up’. Contrary to what @***@koldfront.dk have said [0], they are _not_ for posting to [news]group only, but are supposed to be ‘do what I mean’ commands for replying: in Usenet — post to group (S n), in mail — reply to all (S w).

‘DWIM’ breaks, though, when you are reading mail gatewayed to Usenet or an isolated NNTP server such as Gmane.

Then you have to mark newsgroups that are really mailing lists first. You can do that on one by one basis by setting ‘to-list’ parameter on them — IÊŒve already explained how to do that [1], but really you want to mark all mail-to-news groups at once:

(setq gnus-mailing-list-groups
(rx bol (opt "nntp" (1+ nonl) ":") (or "gmane."
"linux."
"mozilla.")))

Now you can use ‘f’ / ‘F’ instead of ‘S w’ / ‘S W’ just as intended.

[0] <***@tullinup.koldfront.dk>
[1] <***@gnui.org>

-
¹ FWIW, I suggest you to use lower-case variants, followed by C-c C-y if you need quotation.

[Alberto Luaces]

1. I am using Gmail as the backend and received Dmitry Alexandrov's reply in my inbox, but for some reason your reply wasn't there.

He have not addressed you for some reason, cf. ‘To’ and (absent) ‘Cc’ headers in his mail. While they are merely informational, they are usually true.

Yes, I tend to not send personal copies to avoid cluttering the inbox of
the addressees, because they are usually following the list, after all.

Another side effect is that you can inadvertently reply also personally
to those emails, so the conversation will not be registered on the list,
nor the other participants will see it.

To reply this way (for example, this very message) I just press "F", as
Dmitry explains.

[Adam Sjøgren]

As for ‘f’ and ‘F’, they do _not_ stay for ‘forwarding’, but for
they are _not_ for posting to [news]group only,

This is what I wrote:

For newsgroups (e.g. Gmane) R sends to the author only, and F sends to
the group. (S W sends to both.)

For email, you can think of R in Gnus as "Reply", and F as "Reply All".

I don't understand how you get from that to '"F" is for newsgroups
only' - that is clearly not what I wrote.


Best regards,

Adam

[Rafi Khan]

Post by Adam Sjøgren
The first strategy is useful if the person writing on the mailing list
isn't subscribed to it. (I find that an odd thing to do, and with Gmane,
where following a mailing list is very low friction, even more so).

I see, thank you for the explanation! I'm starting to understand now.

Thanks,
Rafi

[Rafi Khan]

Hi,

Thank you for the thorough explanation. It has been very helpful.

Post by Dmitry Alexandrov
(setq gnus-mailing-list-groups
(rx bol (opt "nntp" (1+ nonl) ":") (or "gmane."
"linux."
"mozilla.")))
Now you can use ‘f’ / ‘F’ instead of ‘S w’ / ‘S W’ just as intended.

Perfect, I've added those lines to my configuration. I think it is working properly now.

Thanks,
Rafi

[황병희]

Hellow Rafi^^^

Post by Rafi Khan
Hi all,
I am new to gnus and mailing lists and have just setup Emacs with GNUS
and my email account.
This is just a test email so that I can confirm things are setup as
intended.
Further, is there a guide I can read to learn more about how to use
mailing lists? There's a lot of terminology in the gnus documentation
which I am unfamiliar with such as "post", "news" and "group". Some of
this can be inferred from the documentation and context but others are
not so clear to me.
Thanks,
Rafi Khan

Welcome to the Gnus World^^^ Plus [1] looks good.
Most Gnus fan are at there [1].

[1] gmane.emacs.gnus.general

Sincerely, Gnus fan Byung-Hee

[Rafi Khan]

Hi Byung-Hee

Post by 황병희
Welcome to the Gnus World^^^ Plus [1] looks good.
Most Gnus fan are at there [1].
[1] gmane.emacs.gnus.general

Awesome thanks, I am now subscribed :D

Thanks,
Rafi

[황병희]

Dear Rafi,

Post by Rafi Khan
Hi Byung-Hee

Post by 황병희
Welcome to the Gnus World^^^ Plus [1] looks good.
Most Gnus fan are at there [1].
[1] gmane.emacs.gnus.general

Awesome thanks, I am now subscribed :D
Thanks,
Rafi

Again thanks for using Gnus^^^
And thanks for using *BSD^^^ (from berkeley-unix)

Sincerely, Gnus fan Byung-Hee

[Emanuel Berg]

Be sure to add these groups, as well as
gmane.emacs.gnus.user ( = this one)

gmane.discuss
gmane.emacs.help
gmane.emacs.gnus.general
gmane.test