Explore Gnus for systemcrafters stream

General
1

For the past week I’ve been taking a look at online discussions around Gnus, its manual and youtube content. All these are quite insufficient for getting started with Gnus.

Would @daviwil explore Emacs Gnus for the purposes of:

  • email sending/receving/managin
  • reading RSS/Atom feeds

In one (or in a series) of his livestream topics? I remember his videos about setting up emacs from scracth helped me a lot with getting started with emacs, so, I think he can have the same effect now but for (another equally gargantuan tool) Gnus.

2 Likes
2

I really should give Gnus a shot, it’s been a very long time since I looked at it. Maybe this Friday?

2 Likes
3

For:

reading RSS/Atom feeds

I highly suggest taking a look at gwene.org (and gmane.io for reading mailing lists) which is a feed->nntp gateway. It can be configured like:

    (gnus-secondary-select-methods
     '(...
       (nntp "news.gwene.org")     
       (nntp "news.gmane.io")))

prospective feeds can then be found and subscribed to via gnus browse server buffer as you would subscribe to newsgroups.

Gnus does have nnatom and nnrss backends, but if you want to subscribe to multiple feeds its performance isn’t great (it can be improved by using Asynchronous Fetching (Gnus Manual) though); so maybe these gateways are a worthwhile and feasible thing to explore.

On a side note: I am not using it myself, but I always thought it’s a super interesting thing that gnus provides Web Searches (Gnus Manual) capabilities; haven’t found a use-case for it yet though.

4

That would be awesome.

Personally, I want to try this instead of relying on gwene/gmane.

5

This may be useful to you… C-h v or C-h f as appropriate for more documentation on specific variables or functions.

;;; gnus.el --- Gnus config                          -*- lexical-binding: t; -*-

;; Copyright (C) 2025  Jeff Bowman

;; Author: Jeff Bowman <jeff.t.bowman@gmail.com>
;; Keywords: lisp

;; This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
;; it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
;; the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
;; (at your option) any later version.

;; This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
;; but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
;; GNU General Public License for more details.

;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
;; along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

;;; Commentary:

;; Example Gnus configuration.  Most of this should go in the
;; `~/.gnus' file, some goes in the `~/.emacs.d/init.el' file.

;;; Code:

;;;; stuff to put in `$HOME/.gnus'

;; for getting credentials to the mail server
(setq netrc-file (expand-file-name ".authinfo.gpg" (getenv "HOME")))
;; turning on async functions
(setq gnus-asynchronous t)

;; setup Gmail client - will need to configure Gmail to use IMAP
(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
      '((nnimap "mygoogle"
                (nnimap-address "imap.gmail.com")
                (nnimap-server-port "imaps")
                (nnimap-stream ssl)
                (nnir-search-engine imap)
                (nnmail-expiry-target "nnimap+mygoogle:[Gmail]/Trash")
                (nnmail-expiry-wait 'immediate))))

;; Set the "from" address and the email signature, use this especially
;; when you have multiple accounts so replies or email sent will
;; reflect the correct account.  Note that "mygoogle" here matches the
;; name of the account above
(setq gnus-posting-styles
      '(("mygoogle"
         (address "Your Name <your.name@gmail.com>")
         (signature-file "~/.mygmail-sig")
         ("X-Message-SMTP-Method" "smtp smtp.gmail.com 587 your.name@gmail.com"))))

;; make the group summary line show useful information
(setq gnus-summary-line-format "%U%R%z%I%(%[%~(max-right 4)o-%~(cut 4)~(max-right 2)o-%~(cut 6)~(max-right 2)o %~(cut 9)~(max-right 2)o:%~(cut 11)~(max-right 2)o:%~(cut 13)~(max-right 2)o: %-23,23f%]%) %s\n")

(setq gnus-article-sort-functions '((not gnus-article-sort-by-number)))


;;;; Stuff to put in your init.el file

;; bbdb - "rolodex" for storing contacts
(when (require 'bbdb nil :noerror)
  (bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)
  (bbdb-mua-auto-update-init 'gnus 'message)
  (add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook #'bbdb-insinuate-gnus))

;; gnus - address completions, and dired for when attachments are
;; needed.
(with-eval-after-load 'gnus
  (when (require 'message nil :noerror)
    (keymap-set message-mode-map "C-c <tab>" #'eudc-expand-inline))
  (with-eval-after-load 'sendmail
    (keymap-set message-mode-map "C-c <tab>" #'eudc-expand-inline))
  (add-hook 'dired-mode-hook #'turn-on-gnus-dired-mode))

;; eudc - uses bbdb as the backend
(with-eval-after-load 'eudc
  (require 'eudcb-bbdb nil :noerror))

(provide 'gnus)
;;; gnus.el ends here
2 Likes
6

Would like to use gnus but fist would need to setup the proton bridge and I didn’t came around to set this up yet.

7

I would like to use Gnus to read my fastmail, with my own domain, and send email with it from different email addresses via the same fastmail account.

Is it possible? (sorry, EIPNIF!) Or, at least, is it possible to showcase something like that in the livestream? I would like to see that.

And maybe some bbdb?

8

You can use hydroxide tool for protonmail.

9

I’m using Gnus in a professional/corporate context and have used both notmuch and mu4e before they’ve gotten cool. I was working with a near-zero inbox with all of them and used heavy tagging. Turns out, tagging is not really necessary for me. I come by with flagging mails to keep them visible in my inbox. This being said, I still use notmuch indexing for both search and the address book.

Pros:

  • S/MIME works out of the box, both reading and writing. The others always had issues with it.

Cons:

  • Hard to set up (but so were the other as well, kind of)
  • S/MIME encrypted mails you send out are unreadable for Outlook users but fine for virtually everyone else. Signing is fine.