brian@RADIO.ASTRO.UTORONTO.CA (Brian Glendenning) (05/25/89)
I'm currently "testdriving" GNUS, and have a couple of questions I wonder if you could help me with (I curently use Gnews). In some sort of semblance of decreasing importance: 1) I guess a Sun 3/180 must be a "slow" machine, since I had to set gnus-group-headers to nil in gnus-Exit-group-hook. Without this leaving some newsgroups was just too painful. This is pretty much OK, except I'd like to nuke the xrefs of the articles I actually read. I expect I need some tiny little incantation in gnus-Article-prepare-hook. Can anyone tell me what that would be (bonus marks if the xrefs get nuked after the first page is displayed :-) Out of curiousity, how fast a machine do you need to have before leaving a newsgroup isn't noticeable? (Sometimes I think GNUS and Gnews should talk to rn or rrn instead of nntp. Sigh). 2) I often read news from home at 2400 baud, and I'd like to make gnus only display articles when I explicitly ask for them (i.e. hit the spacebar). Although I have auto-select-first set to nil, when I, for example, kill the current subject, after the kills are done the first remaining article is brought up. (Hope that's clear). 3) How can I go to the next newsgroup in subject mode rather than back to the newsgroups buffer when I catch-up within a subject buffer. 4) I am probably an idiot. My attempts to automatically sort subjects (by subject) in gnus-Subject-mode-hook has failed dismally. 5) We have both nntp running and news on local spool. I am assuming that the local spool code is faster, except for possibly following article references back. Is this right? Anyway, thanks in advance for any insight or advice you can give me. -- Brian Glendenning - Radio astronomy, University of Toronto brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca uunet!utai!radio!brian glendenn@utorphys.bitnet
karl@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (05/25/89)
brian@RADIO.ASTRO.UTORONTO.CA (Brian Glendenning) writes:
1) I guess a Sun 3/180 must be a "slow" machine, since I had to set
gnus-group-headers to nil in gnus-Exit-group-hook. Without this
leaving some newsgroups was just too painful.
Hm - I use a Sun3/50 with an NFS-mounted /usr/spool/news most of the
time, and I seldom have any problem. When there are a *lot* of
articles in the newsgroup, exit may take a while, but that's
relatively infrequent. Can you provide examples? How many articles,
how much Xref: resolution, etc, make it seem slow?
2) I often read news from home at 2400 baud, and I'd like to make gnus
only display articles when I explicitly ask for them (i.e. hit the
spacebar). Although I have auto-select-first set to nil, when I, for
example, kill the current subject, after the kills are done the first
remaining article is brought up. (Hope that's clear).
`k' is gnus-Subject-kill-same-subject-and-select. If instead you use
`C-k,' then you execute gnus-Subject-kill-same-subject, which does not
select the next article.
3) How can I go to the next newsgroup in subject mode rather than back
to the newsgroups buffer when I catch-up within a subject buffer.
You can't, from what I've been able to determine.
4) I am probably an idiot. My attempts to automatically sort subjects
(by subject) in gnus-Subject-mode-hook has failed dismally.
You're not an idiot, you just haven't read the documentation
sufficiently carefully. You're using the wrong hook. From the Info
system node `Hooks':
This hook is intended to customize Subject Mode only once.
You should instead be using gnus-Select-group-hook, which is run each
time that any group is selected. There is a good example there (in
`Hooks,' that is) of how to do what you want.
5) We have both nntp running and news on local spool. I am assuming
that the local spool code is faster, except for possibly following
article references back. Is this right?
I think so, but my usage of the NNTP code has been only slight, for
testing purposes - we normally don't allow NNTP reading, depending on
an NFS-mounted spool instead.
--Karlbrian@RADIO.ASTRO.UTORONTO.CA (Brian Glendenning) (05/25/89)
on 25 May 89 11:56:21 GMT, karl@cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) said: kk> Hm - I use a Sun3/50 with an NFS-mounted /usr/spool/news most of the kk> time, and I seldom have any problem. When there are a *lot* of kk> articles in the newsgroup, exit may take a while, but that's kk> relatively infrequent. Can you provide examples? How many articles, kk> how much Xref: resolution, etc, make it seem slow? Karl and Dave Lawrence pointed out that deleting cross references was fast on their comparable machines. Knowing that it was a local problem enabled me to easily track down the problem. We run Cnews (alpha) on radio. The alpha expire doesn't update the low article number in the active file, there is a separate program to be run periodically for that. I hadn't been running that program, so most of the newsgroups had low article numbers of zero, and high numbers in the many thousands. Fixing this has brought, e.g., the time from exiting rec.music.cd today (6 unread articles) from over 30 seconds to not noticeable. Thanks! kk> You're not an idiot[...] Maybe you should retract! Brian -- Brian Glendenning - Radio astronomy, University of Toronto brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca uunet!utai!radio!brian glendenn@utorphys.bitnet
chet@arc.UUCP (Chet Wood) (06/07/89)
In article <KARL.89May25075621@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu>, karl@giza (Karl Kleinpaste) writes: [ this is entirely out of context ] > From the Info system node `Hooks': Hmm.. There wasn't an Info package in the gnus distribution I got... When I first started reading news, I did a quick test drive of both Gnews and gnus, and even though gnus seemed more friendly and less unwieldy, I decided to use Gnews because it had an info package. I've been wondering if I made the right decision-- am I right in figuring that, because gnus has its own news group, it's more popular? And could I deduce from the fact that it's more popular that it's "better?" Sorry if this starts a flame war, but I just can't resist. ;=) Anyway, if someone could direct me to some uucp- or mail-able gnus documentation, I'd be very grateful. Chet Wood ~ (408)727-3357 arc!chet@apple.COM . Advansoft Research Corporation chet@arc.UUCP . 4301 Great America Parkway apple!arc!chet . Santa Clara, CA 95054, USA
tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (06/07/89)
In article <361@arc.UUCP> chet@arc.UUCP (Chet Wood) writes: > Hmm.. There wasn't an Info package in the gnus distribution I got... I am mailing you the gnus.texinfo for GNUS 3.11; that is, as long as my mailer can find you (it hates UUCP with a passion). I have it split into four ~35k files for a recent mailing I had to make to someone else. > I've been wondering if I made the right decision-- am I right in > figuring that, because gnus has its own news group, it's more popular? Um, hard to say. The group really wasn't created out of sheer popularity (I _think_; no promises here) but because the author is in Japan and this group made it easier for GNUS users to communicate with each other and him. (If I am wrong about this I am sure I will be soundly chastised by either Bob or Masanobu.) I do see GNUS mentioned more then Gnews on the net, but that is hardly a scientific poll. > And could I deduce from the fact that it's more popular that it's > "better?" Could you ever really make that conclusion based soley on something's popularity? Dave -- (setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@itsgw.rpi.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet")) "I realize the Internet isn't the whole world, but it is the center of it." -- Greg Woods
brian@RADIO.ASTRO.UTORONTO.CA (Brian Glendenning) (06/07/89)
Chet Wood writes: > > When I first started reading news, I did a quick test drive of both > Gnews and gnus, and even though gnus seemed more friendly and less > unwieldy, I decided to use Gnews because it had an info package. As I recent Gnews to gnus convert maybe I can shed some light on this. Gnews seems to be much more adaptable. For instance the hooks to implement signatures are awesomely intricate, and the digest reading capability is superb. gnus seems to have a better basic user interface. I find that I trundle through the same amount of news more quickly (although Gnews loads faster initially). This, to me is the single most important point. The Newsgroups buffer is also a very good idea. It does appear that Gnews might be an orphan, and that gnus is more popular (read - more useful hooks etc being written). I vaguely recall that when I first looked at gnus it didn't have a manual. This was a big strike against it. The manual is now quite good (though I'd give the nod to Gnews here). For me the bottom line is that gnus lets me get through the news faster, and that it appears to be more actively worked on. -- Brian Glendenning - Radio astronomy, University of Toronto brian@radio.astro.utoronto.ca uunet!utai!radio!brian glendenn@utorphys.bitnet
bob@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (06/13/89)
In article <361@arc.UUCP> chet@arc.UUCP (Chet Wood) writes: ...am I right in figuring that, because gnus has its own news group, it's more popular? And could I deduce from the fact that it's more popular that it's "better?" GNUS has its own news group because it already had its own mailing list, and that made it easy for me to create a corresponding newsgroup. The longstanding tradition (all of 13 months now :-) in the gnu heirarchy is that newsgroups are only created to better distribute mailing lists. There was no gnews mailing list, so there was no corresponding gnu.emacs.gnews. Then it turned out that most of the discussion on info-gnus was in Japanese, using character sets that looked like line noise on our Western screens, so I created the info-gnus-english mailing list (as a subset of info-gnus) and switched gnu.emacs.gnus over to it. So, I suppose that I could just as easily create an info-gnews mailing list as a justification for the existence of gnu.emacs.gnews, but I'm not so inclined. Anyone who would like to handle such a list is welcome to do so, and we'll likely create a corresponding newsgroup for it. Yes, it does seem odd that newsgroups to discuss software that exists only for handling newsgroups would be dependent for their very existence upon corresponding mailing lists, but there are a lot of odder things in this world... In article <8906062327.AA04162@radio.astro.utoronto.ca> brian@RADIO.ASTRO.UTORONTO.CA (Brian Glendenning) writes: For me the bottom line is that gnus lets me get through the news faster, and that it appears to be more actively worked on. Gnews development seems to have stopped with version 2.0 last fall. I haven't heard anything from its author (weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu) since around that time. Perhaps he has turned aside (I Kings 18:27)?
nagel@paris.ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) (06/13/89)
In article <BOB.89Jun12164648@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu>, bob@tinman (Bob Sutterfield) writes: |So, I suppose that I could just as easily create an info-gnews mailing |list as a justification for the existence of gnu.emacs.gnews, but I'm |not so inclined. Anyone who would like to handle such a list is |welcome to do so, and we'll likely create a corresponding newsgroup |for it. That would be great! Tell you what. I'll ask the proper people here for an OK, and if it is, I'll announce the info-gnews mailing list based here at UCI. NOTE THAT IT DOESN'T EXIST YET. I'll announce it when (and if) I create it. Once it gets going, then we can make it a gnu.group! |In article <8906062327.AA04162@radio.astro.utoronto.ca> brian@RADIO.ASTRO.UTORONTO.CA (Brian Glendenning) writes: | For me the bottom line is that gnus lets me get through the news | faster, and that it appears to be more actively worked on. | |Gnews development seems to have stopped with version 2.0 last fall. I |haven't heard anything from its author (weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu) |since around that time. Perhaps he has turned aside (I Kings 18:27)? He does seem to have disappeared. I think an active list/group would at least lead to more community development and sharing of ideas on how to improve and fix Gnews, which is the *best* (religious war alert) reader around (as long as you have a fast system :-). Mark Nagel @ UC Irvine, Department of Information and Computer Science +----------------------------------------+ ARPA: nagel@ics.uci.edu | If you improve something long enough | UUCP: ucbvax!ucivax!nagel | eventually you will throw it away. |
nagel@paris.ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) (06/14/89)
In article <17585@paris.ics.uci.edu>, nagel@paris (Mark Nagel) writes: |In article <BOB.89Jun12164648@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu>, bob@tinman (Bob Sutterfield) writes: ||So, I suppose that I could just as easily create an info-gnews mailing ||list as a justification for the existence of gnu.emacs.gnews, but I'm ||not so inclined. Anyone who would like to handle such a list is ||welcome to do so, and we'll likely create a corresponding newsgroup ||for it. |That would be great! Tell you what. I'll ask the proper people here |for an OK, and if it is, I'll announce the info-gnews mailing list |based here at UCI. NOTE THAT IT DOESN'T EXIST YET. I'll announce it |when (and if) I create it. Once it gets going, then we can make it a |gnu.group! Well, I asked myself :-) and I said yes, so here we go... There is now a new mailing list for the discussion of Gnews 2.0 (and beyond if anyone has any great contributions to make!): info-gnews@ics.uci.edu -or- info-gnews@ucivax.uucp Please send requests to join this list to: info-gnews-request@ics.uci.edu -or- info-gnews-request@ucivax.uucp Requests sent to the actual mailing list will probably be ignored and will also make you look silly. Once this gets going, I hope Bob creates a gnu.emacs.gnews gatewayed with the list, since as he said, discussions about news software are generally better suited to newsgroups. But, if this is the way it's gotta be done... Mark Nagel @ UC Irvine, Department of Information and Computer Science +----------------------------------------+ ARPA: nagel@ics.uci.edu | Six plus six equals fourteen for large | UUCP: ucbvax!ucivax!nagel | values of six -- Dave Ackerman |