(gnus)Gnus Unplugged


Gnus Unplugged
==============

   In olden times (ca. February '88), people used to run their
newsreaders on big machines with permanent connections to the net.
News transport was dealt with by news servers, and all the newsreaders
had to do was to read news.  Believe it or not.

   Nowadays most people read news and mail at home, and use some sort of
modem to connect to the net.  To avoid running up huge phone bills, it
would be nice to have a way to slurp down all the news and mail, hang up
the phone, read for several hours, and then upload any responses you
have to make.  And then you repeat the procedure.

   Of course, you can use news servers for doing this as well.  I've
used `inn' together with `slurp', `pop' and `sendmail' for some years,
but doing that's a bore.  Moving the news server functionality up to
the newsreader makes sense if you're the only person reading news on a
machine.

   Using Gnus as an "offline" newsreader is quite simple.

   * First, set up Gnus as you would do if you were running it on a
     machine that has full connection to the net.  Go ahead.  I'll
     still be waiting here.

   * Then, put the following magical incantation at the end of your
     `.gnus.el' file:

          (gnus-agentize)

   That's it.  Gnus is now an "offline" newsreader.

   Of course, to use it as such, you have to learn a few new commands.

Agent Basics: How it all is supposed to work.
Agent Categories: How to tell the Gnus Agent what to download.
Agent Commands: New commands for all the buffers.
Agent Expiry: How to make old articles go away.
Agent and IMAP: How to use the Agent with IMAP.
Outgoing Messages: What happens when you post/mail something?
Agent Variables: Customizing is fun.
Example Setup: An example `.gnus.el' file for offline people.
Batching Agents: How to fetch news from a `cron' job.
Agent Caveats: What you think it'll do and what it does.

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