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(gnus)Group Line Specification

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Group Line Specification
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   The default format of the group buffer is nice and dull, but you can
make it as exciting and ugly as you feel like.

   Here's a couple of example group lines:

          25: news.announce.newusers
      *    0: alt.fan.andrea-dworkin

   Quite simple, huh?

   You can see that there are 25 unread articles in
`news.announce.newusers'.  There are no unread articles, but some
ticked articles, in `alt.fan.andrea-dworkin' (see that little asterisk
at the beginning of the line?).

   You can change that format to whatever you want by fiddling with the
`gnus-group-line-format' variable.  This variable works along the lines
of a `format' specification, which is pretty much the same as a
`printf' specifications, for those of you who use (feh!) C.  Note:
Formatting Variables.

   `%M%S%5y: %(%g%)\n' is the value that produced those lines above.

   There should always be a colon on the line; the cursor always moves
to the colon after performing an operation.  Nothing else is
required--not even the group name.  All displayed text is just window
dressing, and is never examined by Gnus.  Gnus stores all real
information it needs using text properties.

   (Note that if you make a really strange, wonderful, spreadsheet-like
layout, everybody will believe you are hard at work with the accounting
instead of wasting time reading news.)

   Here's a list of all available format characters:

`M'
     An asterisk if the group only has marked articles.

`S'
     Whether the group is subscribed.

`L'
     Level of subscribedness.

`N'
     Number of unread articles.

`I'
     Number of dormant articles.

`T'
     Number of ticked articles.

`R'
     Number of read articles.

`t'
     Estimated total number of articles.  (This is really MAX-NUMBER
     minus MIN-NUMBER plus 1.)

`y'
     Number of unread, unticked, non-dormant articles.

`i'
     Number of ticked and dormant articles.

`g'
     Full group name.

`G'
     Group name.

`D'
     Newsgroup description.

`o'
     `m' if moderated.

`O'
     `(m)' if moderated.

`s'
     Select method.

`n'
     Select from where.

`z'
     A string that looks like `<%s:%n>' if a foreign select method is
     used.

`P'
     Indentation based on the level of the topic (Note: Group Topics).

`c'
     Short (collapsed) group name.  The `gnus-group-uncollapsed-levels'
     variable says how many levels to leave at the end of the group
     name.  The default is 1--this will mean that group names like
     `gnu.emacs.gnus' will be shortened to `g.e.gnus'.

`m'
     `%' (`gnus-new-mail-mark') if there has arrived new mail to the
     group lately.

`p'
     `#' (`gnus-process-mark') if the group is process marked.

`d'
     A string that says when you last read the group (Note: Group
     Timestamp).

`u'
     User defined specifier.  The next character in the format string
     should be a letter.  Gnus will call the function
     `gnus-user-format-function-'`X', where `X' is the letter following
     `%u'.  The function will be passed a single dummy parameter as
     argument.  The function should return a string, which will be
     inserted into the buffer just like information from any other
     specifier.

   All the "number-of" specs will be filled with an asterisk (`*') if
no info is available--for instance, if it is a non-activated foreign
group, or a bogus native group.