Re: Newsreader: Best of the bunch?

["Paul Smith" <psmith@nortel.com>]

%% marc <gmane@auxbuss.com> writes:

  m> I know, but here's a 'for example'. I've loaded xemacs and opened
  m> gnus.  It merrily waltzes off and downloads stuff from
  m> new.gmane.org... then presents me with two ngs: nndraft:drafts,
  m> nndraft:queue. Well, I presume they are ngs, although my other
  m> clients don't see them.

They're not real newsgroups.  Gnus has multiple "backends" that it can
use; it can do much more than read news (NNTP).  Many people use Gnus to
read their mail as well: it has backends that can access various types
of mailbox formats ("nnfolder", "nnmbox", etc.)  The "nndrafts" backend
is for posts you're working on but haven't sent yet.  In the Gnus
manual, look up nndraft in the index (use "i", then "nndraft RET"--or
you can use the Info -> Index -> Lookup a string menu pick).

There's also an archive (usually using nnfolder) that saves your
outgoing posts after they're sent.

  m> Next, I look everywhere to try to discover how I can see the sorted
  m> list of available ngs and I try to find a relevant part of the docs
  m> that might help. All I want to do is sub to a group and fiddle
  m> about, but I can't even find the list of ngs? L just gives me the
  m> aforementioned two.

Interesting; usually some basic newsgroups are automatically
subscribed.  Maybe the Debian install disables that.

Gnus has multiple levels of "subscribedness".  New groups you've never
seen before (which is all the groups in a new server) have a level of
"zombie", which is one level above "killed".

Go to Groups -> Listing -> List zombie groups to see all the possible
groups (or "A z").  You can subscribe what you want (use "u" to toggle
subscription) and kill the rest of the zombies (Groups -> Subscribe ->
Kill all zombie groups).

You can find out more about this, including the point behind it, in the
Gnus manual section "Group Levels".

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Paul D. Smith <psmith@nortel.com>           HASMAT--HA Software Mthds & Tools
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        These are my opinions--Nortel takes no responsibility for them.