This package contains a beta version of Gnus.  The lisp directory
contains the source lisp files, and the texi directory contains a
draft of the Gnus info pages.

To use Gnus you first have to unpack the files, which you've obviously
done, because you are reading this.

You should definitely byte-compile the source files. To do that, you
can simply say "./configure && make" in this directory.  If you are
using XEmacs, you *must* say "make EMACS=xemacs".  In that case you
may also want to pull down the package of nice glyphs from
<URL:http://www.gnus.org/dist/etc.tar.gz>.  It should be installed
into the "gnus-5.6.53/etc" directory.

Then you have to tell Emacs where Gnus is. You might put something
like

   (setq load-path (cons (expand-file-name "~/gnus-5.6.53/lisp") load-path))

in your .emacs file, or wherever you keep such things.  

To enable reading the Gnus manual, you could say something like:

  (setq Info-default-directory-list 
        (cons "~/gnus-5.6.53/texi" Info-default-directory-list))

or

  (setq Info-directory-list 
        (cons "~/gnus-5.6.53/texi" Info-directory-list))

depending on which version of Emacs or XEmacs you're using.

Note that Gnus and GNUS can't coexist in a single Emacs. They both use
the same function and variable names.  If you have been running GNUS
in your Emacs, you should probably exit that Emacs and start a new one
to fire up Gnus.

Gnus does absolutely not work with anything older than Emacs 20.3 or
XEmacs 20.0.  So you definitely need a new Emacs.

Then you do a `M-x gnus', and everything should... uhm... it should
work, but it might not. Set `debug-on-error' to t, and mail me the
backtraces, or, better yet, find out why Gnus does something wrong,
fix it, and send me the diffs. :-)

There are four main things I want your help and input on:

1) Startup. Does everything go smoothly, and why not?

2) Any errors while you read news normally?

3) Any errors if you do anything abnormal?

4) Features you do not like, or do like, but would like to tweak a
   bit, and features you would like to see.

Send any comments and all your bug fixes/complaints to
`bugs@gnus.org'. 
