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bug#37078: 27.0.50; Proposal: new introductory section to the Gnus manua
From: |
Stefan Kangas |
Subject: |
bug#37078: 27.0.50; Proposal: new introductory section to the Gnus manual |
Date: |
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 04:04:49 +0200 |
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