Info Catalog gnus: Keystrokes gnus: Emacs for Heathens

gnus: Emacs Lisp

 
 11.8.2 Emacs Lisp
 -----------------
 
 Emacs is the King of Editors because it’s really a Lisp interpreter.
 Each and every key you tap runs some Emacs Lisp code snippet, and since
 Emacs Lisp is an interpreted language, that means that you can configure
 any key to run any arbitrary code.  You just, like, do it.
 
    Gnus is written in Emacs Lisp, and is run as a bunch of interpreted
 functions.  (These are byte-compiled for speed, but it’s still
 interpreted.)  If you decide that you don’t like the way Gnus does
 certain things, it’s trivial to have it do something a different way.
 (Well, at least if you know how to write Lisp code.)  However, that’s
 beyond the scope of this manual, so we are simply going to talk about
 some common constructs that you normally use in your ‘~/.gnus.el’ file
 to customize Gnus.  (You can also use the ‘~/.emacs’ file, but in order
 to set things of Gnus up, it is much better to use the ‘~/.gnus.el’
 file, Startup Files.)
 
    If you want to set the variable ‘gnus-florgbnize’ to four (4), you
 write the following:
 
      (setq gnus-florgbnize 4)
 
    This function (really “special form”) ‘setq’ is the one that can set
 a variable to some value.  This is really all you need to know.  Now you
 can go and fill your ‘~/.gnus.el’ file with lots of these to change how
 Gnus works.
 
    If you have put that thing in your ‘~/.gnus.el’ file, it will be read
 and ‘eval’ed (which is Lisp-ese for “run”) the next time you start Gnus.
 If you want to change the variable right away, simply say ‘C-x C-e’
 after the closing parenthesis.  That will ‘eval’ the previous “form”,
 which is a simple ‘setq’ statement here.
 
    Go ahead—just try it, if you’re located at your Emacs.  After you
 ‘C-x C-e’, you will see ‘4’ appear in the echo area, which is the return
 value of the form you ‘eval’ed.
 
    Some pitfalls:
 
    If the manual says “set ‘gnus-read-active-file’ to ‘some’”, that
 means:
 
      (setq gnus-read-active-file 'some)
 
    On the other hand, if the manual says “set ‘gnus-nntp-server-file’ to
 ‘/etc/nntpserver’”, that means:
 
      (setq gnus-nntp-server-file "/etc/nntpserver")
 
    So be careful not to mix up strings (the latter) with symbols (the
 former).  The manual is unambiguous, but it can be confusing.
 

Info Catalog gnus: Keystrokes gnus: Emacs for Heathens