10.9.8 Getting help

Question 8.1:		How to find information and help inside Emacs?
Question 8.2:		I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X

            (e.g. attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented? 

Question 8.3:		Which websites should I know?
Question 8.4:		Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?
Question 8.5:		Where to report bugs?
Question 8.6:		I need real-time help, where to find it?

Question 8.1:

How to find information and help inside Emacs?

Answer:

The first stop should be the Gnus manual (Say `C-h i d m Gnus RET' to start the Gnus manual, then walk through the menus or do a full-text search with `s'). Then there are the general Emacs help commands starting with C-h, type `C-h ? ?' to get a list of all available help commands and their meaning. Finally `M-x apropos-command' lets you search through all available functions and `M-x apropos' searches the bound variables.

Question 8.2:

I can't find anything in the Gnus manual about X (e.g. attachments, PGP, MIME...), is it not documented?

Answer:

There's not only the Gnus manual but also the manuals for message, emacs-mime, sieve and pgg. Those packages are distributed with Gnus and used by Gnus but aren't really part of core Gnus, so they are documented in different info files, you should have a look in those manuals, too.

Question 8.3:

Which websites should I know?

Answer:

The two most important ones are the official Gnus website. and it's sister site my.gnus.org (MGO), hosting an archive of lisp snippets, howtos, a (not really finished) tutorial and this FAQ.

Tell me about other sites which are interesting.

Question 8.4:

Which mailing lists and newsgroups are there?

Answer:

There's the newsgroup gnu.emacs.gnus (pull it from e.g. news.gnus.org) which deals with general questions and the ding mailing list (ding@gnus.org) dealing with development of Gnus. You can read the ding list via NNTP, too under the name gnus.ding from news.gnus.org.

If you want to stay in the big8, news.software.newssreaders is also read by some Gnus users (but chances for qualified help are much better in the above groups) and if you speak German, there's de.comm.software.gnus.

Question 8.5:

Where to report bugs?

Answer:

Say `M-x gnus-bug', this will start a message to the gnus bug mailing list including information about your environment which make it easier to help you.

Question 8.6:

I need real-time help, where to find it?

Answer:

Point your IRC client to irc.my.gnus.org channel #mygnus. Don't be afraid if people there speak German, they are willing and capable of switching to English when people from outside Germany enter.