Re: How to set up gnus email for novices with little mastery.

[Tim McNamara]

Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:

> On Wed, 29 Sep 2004, timmcn@bitstream.net wrote:
>
>> Users migrating to Gnus and Emacs from other Unix applications
>> might have an easier time than those of us coming from Windows or
>> Mac OS/OS X since we don't edit preference files directly and
>> aren't used to doing this.  For GUI-babies like me, whose first
>> computer was a Mac 512Ke bought in 1986, having a nice little
>> window (buffer) in which to enter the relevant server and user
>> information, which would then write to .gnus, would make things
>> much simpler.  I would think that the Customize menu would be able
>> to accommodate this.  BTW, it should be easier to navigate to the
>> Gnus customization group with the Options menu- perhaps the menu
>> should automatically display a "Customize <active mode>" item?
>> This would prevent having to hunt through the various Customize
>> groups hierarchies.
>
> That's a good idea, but it would require a lot of work.  How do you
> synchronize variable groups with buffers that use those variables?
> Manual synchronization is very tedious; automatic synchronization
> will probably miss many groups.

These are issues I don't actually understand, unfortunately.  :-(

>> If this isn't possible, I would think that one could set up a
>> sample .gnus for new users to edit, using nnmail (or nnimap, as the
>> case may be).  This would get them started quickly with a backend
>> that's pretty easy to use.
>
> This is exactly what the Gnus assistants are supposed to do - anyone
> interested in helping new users is more than welcome to contribute.

Well, what I was thinking was just a basic commented .gnus file
similar to what one finds in, say, the Apache httpd.conf file.  Just
enough stuff to let users get their e-mail and respond to it, read
newsgroups, have a sig, etc.  The bare minimum to get Gnus's basics to
work.