11.5.2 Slow Terminal Connection

Let’s say you use your home computer for dialing up the system that runs Emacs and Gnus. If your modem is slow, you want to reduce (as much as possible) the amount of data sent over the wires.

gnus-auto-center-summary

Set this to nil to inhibit Gnus from re-centering the summary buffer all the time. If it is vertical, do only vertical re-centering. If it is neither nil nor vertical, do both horizontal and vertical recentering.

gnus-visible-headers

Cut down on the headers included in the articles to the minimum. You can, in fact, make do without them altogether—most of the useful data is in the summary buffer, anyway. Set this variable to ‘^NEVVVVER’ or ‘From:’, or whatever you feel you need.

Use the following to enable all the available hiding features:

(setq gnus-treat-hide-headers 'head
      gnus-treat-hide-signature t
      gnus-treat-hide-citation t)

gnus-use-full-window

By setting this to nil, you can make all the windows smaller. While this doesn’t really cut down much generally, it means that you have to see smaller portions of articles before deciding that you didn’t want to read them anyway.

gnus-thread-hide-subtree

If this is non-nil, all threads in the summary buffer will be hidden initially.

gnus-updated-mode-lines

If this is nil, Gnus will not put information in the buffer mode lines, which might save some time.