Gnus (), or Gnus Network User Services, is a message reader which is part of

GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a free software text editor. It was created by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project and a flagship project of ...

. It supports reading and composing both

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

and

news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. N ...

and can also act as an RSS reader, web processor, and directory browser for both local and remote filesystems. Gnus blurs the distinction between news and e-mail, treating them both as "articles" that come from different sources. News articles are kept separate by group, and e-mail can be split into arbitrary groups, similar to folders in other mail readers. In addition, Gnus is able to use a number of web-based sources as inputs for its groups.

Features

Some Gnus features: * a range of backends that support any or all of: ** reading email from the local filesystem, or over a network via

IMAP In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...

POP3 In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most common ...

** reading web pages via an RSS feed ** treating a directory of files, either local or remote (via

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

or other method) as articles to browse ** reading Usenet News, including the

Gmane Gmane (pronounced "mane") is an e-mail to news gateway. It allows users to access electronic mailing lists as if they were Usenet newsgroups, and also through a variety of web interfaces. Since Gmane is a bidirectional gateway, it can also be ...

and Gwene mail-to-news archives of mailing lists ** searching local or remote indices of emails or news items, e.g. via Notmuch * simple or advanced mail splitting (automatic sorting of incoming mail to user-defined groups) * incoming mail can be set to expire instead of just plain deletion * custom posting styles (e.g. a different From address, .signature etc.) for each group * virtual groups (e.g., directory on the computer can be read as a group) * an advanced message scoring system * user-defined hooks for almost any method (in emacs lisp) * many of the parameters (e.g., expiration, posting style) can be specified individually for all of the groups * integration with the Insidious Big Brother Database (BBDB) to handle contacts in a highly automated fashion. * integration with other Emacs packages, such as the W3 web browser,

LDAP The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory servi ...

lookup code, etc. As part of Emacs, Gnus' features can be extended indefinitely through

Emacs lisp Emacs Lisp is a dialect of the Lisp programming language used as a scripting language by Emacs (a text editor family most commonly associated with GNU Emacs and XEmacs). It is used for implementing most of the editing functionality built into Em ...

. To quote the Gnus Manual: :''"You know that Gnus gives you all the opportunity you'd ever want for shooting yourself in the foot. Some people call it flexibility. Gnus is also customizable to a great extent, which means that the user has a say on how Gnus behaves. Other newsreaders might unconditionally shoot you in your foot, but with Gnus, you have a choice!"'

Note that the composition of HTML email messages (as users of more

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

editors may be used to) is not included by default; the lack of this "ability" is counted as a feature by Gnus' traditional user base.

History

Gnus is a rewrite of GNUS by Masanobu Umeda, which ceased to be developed in 1992. In autumn 1994, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen started the rewrite under the name ''(ding)'' which is a

recursive acronym A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'', in which Hofs ...

for ''ding is not Gnus'', intending to produce a version for which the interface and configuration would work almost exactly the same, but the internals would be completely revamped and improved. The new version proved to be popular and has undergone constant expansion and enhancement. Ingebrigtsen is also programmer of eww.

Versions

In general, users receive Gnus bundled with their copy of

and only need to worry about version numbers if they want to upgrade to newer versions themselves instead of receiving updates through Emacs or their operating system's packaging system. The following versions have been released: * Gnus 5 ((ding) Gnus) – November 1995 ** Gnus 5.1 rebranded 5.0.13 bundled with GNU Emacs 19.30/19.31 * Gnus 5.2 (September Gnus) – May 1996 ** Gnus 5.3, a rebranded 5.2.38 bundled with GNU Emacs 19.32 and all later versions of GNU Emacs 19.x * Gnus 5.4 (Red Gnus) – January 25, 1997 ** Gnus 5.5, a rebranded 5.4 bundled with GNU Emacs 20.1 (September 17, 1997) and also included in XEmacs 20.4 * Gnus 5.6 (Quassia Gnus) – March 8, 1998 * Gnus 5.8 (Pterodactyl Gnus) – December 3, 1999 * Gnus 5.10 (Oort Gnus) – May 1, 2003 ** Gnus 5.11, a rebranded 5.10 bundled with GNU Emacs 22.1 (June 2, 2007). 5.10/5.11 development from the "Oort" development branch wrapped up around 2008. Some 5.11 versions, such as that packaged by

Ubuntu Linux Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. Al ...

as "5.11+v0.10", are actually based on the later "No Gnus" development branch. * Gnus 5.13 (No Gnus) - bundled with

23.1 (July 29, 2009) ** The "No Gnus" development branch began January 4, 2004, and wrapped up in early 2012, with version 0.19. * Gnus 5.14, Ma Gnus (or 真 Gnus), is the current development version, v0.7 first released in May 2013. The odd minor version numbers, like 5.3 and 5.5 are for the Gnus versions bundled with

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

Emacs. The even version numbers are the unbundled releases. So for example, Gnus 5.5 is similar to Gnus 5.4, but bundled with Emacs 20.1. Development is done using "named versions", whose first letters run backwards in the alphabet; "No Gnus" v0.19 was released in early 2012, and development transitioned to "Ma Gnus". No named version ever reaches 1.0, instead when it is considered stable enough for general release, it sheds its name and gets packaged with as simply "Gnus ". Entering the "V" command in the Groups buffer of a running copy of Gnus will usually cause it to divulge a version number, but there is no easy way for an end user to know if, for example, "No Gnus 0.9" is older or newer than "Gnus 5.10.8". After being developed separately for 22 years, the developer of Gnus announced that further development would take place inside

Gnu Emacs GNU Emacs is a free software text editor. It was created by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project and a flagship project of ...

git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

tree. A side effect of this change is that support for

XEmacs XEmacs is a graphical- and console-based text editor which runs on almost any Unix-like operating system as well as Microsoft Windows. XEmacs is a fork, based on a version of GNU Emacs from the late 1980s. Any user can download, use, and modify X ...

and older versions of Gnu Emacs will be dropped.

References

External links

* {{E-mail clients Free email software Email client software for Linux MacOS email clients Usenet clients Emacs Emacs modes Cross-platform free software Free software programmed in Lisp

Features

History

Versions

See also

References

External links