bug#37078: 27.0.50; Proposal: new introductory section to the Gnus manual

[Stefan Kangas]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:

> Gnus has a great big manual, but it's a little difficult to dive into.

I remember diving into Gnus 10 years ago and using it for a good 4-5
years.  I can testify the initial setup was a bit daunting, and having
read your proposal, I think it's a good introduction for beginners.

> Welcome, gentle user, to the Gnus newsreader and email client! Gnus is
> unlike most clients, in part because of its gross configurability, and
> in part because of its historical origins. While Gnus is now a
> fully-featured email client, it began life as a newsreader, and its DNA
> is still newsreader DNA.

Should we perhaps mention what "newsreader" means in this context?  I
suspect that a lot of people would read that as "RSS reader".  Usenet
is of course still around, but it's not commonly known that it even
exists, in my experience.

> The typical assumptions of a newsreader are:
>
> 1. The news server offers a potentially enormous number of newsgroups to
>    read. The user may only be interested in some of those groups, and
>    more interested in some than others.

This makes sense if one knows basically what Usenet is already.

>   A Gnus installation is basically just a list of one or more servers,
>   plus the user’s subscribed groups from those servers.

I would imagine that the groups contain articles.  Perhaps that's
worth mentioning.

With those minor comments, I think it's a good addition to the Gnus manual.

Thanks,
Stefan Kangas