🚀 go-pugleaf

I find that I read news more quickly if Gnews silently indexes and
sorts every newsgroup I enter before popping up the *gnews*index*
buffer in a separate window.  All I have to do is to skim the
*gnews*index* buffer for interesting articles by topic or poster's
reputation, read only these articles, and then go on to the next
newsgroup by hitting 'c' to catch up on the unread articles.  If you
have to hit '=' after you enter a newsgroup to make Gnews index it,
you have to watch the *gnews*index* buffer scroll and scroll as Gnews
puts more subject lines into it, or you have to hit 'S' after the
*gnews*index* buffer stops scrolling to make Gnews sort it, then you
can use these customizations to save time too.

:::: In my ~/.emacs ::::

(setq gnews-start-hook		'gnews-start-hook)

(defun gnews-start-hook ()
  (if (featurep 'gnews-mode-hook) nil
    (fset 'article-quit 'my-article-quit)
    (setq
     ;; if you trim the headers, more articles will fit entirely on the screen
     article-header-ignore		(append '(
						  Distribution
						  Keywords
						  Lines
						  Message-ID
						  References
						  Reply-To
						  ) article-header-ignore)
     e-reply-signature-prefix-pointers	'(nil nil nil nil)
     gnews-copyright-display		nil
     gnews-dot-dir			"~/.Gnews/"
     gnews-news-dir			"~/"
     hook-kill-pop			nil
     ;; these are the important customizations for faster newsreading
     index-pop-up			t
     index-show-p			nil
     index-sort-do			t
     ;; end of important customizations
     n-reply-hook			'turn-on-auto-fill
     n-reply-signature-prefix-pointers	'(nil nil nil nil)
     )
    (provide 'gnews-mode-hook)))

;; another important customization - prompting after every article
;; wastes a lot of time and annoys me a lot
(defun my-article-quit ()
  "Quit the current article but don't bother me with a prompt."
  (interactive)
  (article-forward-intern t)
  (if article-junkable (article-junk))
  (group-mode)
  (gnews-flush)
  t)

:::: In my ~/.Gnews/.gnewsrc.hook ::::

;; how to always index a newsgroup when entering it (saves having to
;; type '=')

(setq				; -*- Emacs-Lisp -*-
 hook-kill-all
 '(nil
   ("."
    (pre nil index-if)
    )
   ;; rest of hooks elided...
   ))

If you've got some customizations that help you read news more quickly
or suggestions for improving the above customizations, let's see them
too!

John Interrante <interran@interviews.stanford.edu>