News server access from Gnus [was: Re: [OT] Reading Emacs Tutorials]

[Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>]

On Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:36:15 -0700, prad <prad@towardsfreedom.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:16:54 +0200
> Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
>> I am using the newsgroup instead of the mailing list, but having a
>> bidirectional gateway helps a lot.
>
> ok so i presume you are using emacs for the newsgroup?  i'm going to
> try this, once i find out how to get news through our cable company -
> when i try news in emacs, i get unable to open nntp:news so i presume
> our cable company doesn't offer it.

I am using Gnus both for email and Usenet access.  My email messages
arrive through fetchmail to `~/Mailbox' where Gnus picks them up from
and filters them to nnml:* folders through an `nnmail-split-fancy' list
of patterns.

For Usenet access, I pull a small number of groups through a free NNTP
server (news.sunsite.dk).  It requires NNTP authentication but anyone is
free to register for NNTP access.

If your ISP is not actively blocking NNTP access to other sources, you
can always register to sunsite.dk and then configure Gnus to use it as
one of the message sources.  My own setup is:

    (setq nntp-authinfo-function 'nntp-send-authinfo)
    (setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.sunsite.dk"))
    (setq gnus-message-archive-group "nnml:posted")

For more details for the news server I am using, please take a minute or
two to read the instructions at `http://dotsrc.org/usenet/' and, more
importantly, the rules of usage at `http://dotsrc.org/usenet/policy/'.

There are also other public, freely available servers you can use for
news access, like:

  * Gmane.  A bi-directional gateway from many mailing lists to Usenet
    style groups and vice versa.  See `http://gmane.org/post.php'.

  * Motzarella.  A private project providing free access to text-only
    Usenet News.  See `http://news.motzarella.org/'.

I'm sure there are several others that I am missing.  If you find any
and you use them with satisfactory results for some time, please let me
know, so I can add them to the list of public news servers I recommend
to anyone who asks :-)