Gnus is a flexible message reader running under emacs. it supports reading and composing both news and mail. in addition, it is able to use a number of web-based sources as inputs for its groups. the main gnus goal is to provide the user with an efficient and extensible interface towards dealing with large numbers of messages, no matter the form they may have or wherever they may come from. gnus is fully mime-compliant and supports reading and composing messages using any charset that emacs supports.

gnus biggest strength is the fact that it is extremely customisable. it is somewhat intimidating at first glance, but most of the complexity can be ignored until you're ready to take advantage of it. if you receive a reasonable volume of e-mail (i.e. you're on various mailing lists), or you would like to read high-volume mailing lists but cannot keep up with them, or read high volume newsgroups or are just bored, then gnus may be what you want.

note: this package contains beta version from no gnus series. users of gnu emacs 23 are better served by gnus 5.13 included in gnu emacs 23 packages.