Trying to customize my gnus

[andrea crotti]

I'd really love to stop using the stupid web interface and pass
completely to gnus, but I need some help to understand..

- pasting (yanking) stuff:
  I see other people nicely pasting with --cut-- syntax and I suppose
  they do it from gnus, but I didn't find any function for that.

- activating hooks:
  When I write messages I would like to activate some hooks, but which
  is the right hook? (I tried message-mode-hook but didn't work)

- download faster:
  When I enter a big newsgroup it takes a very long time.
  Isn't it possible to download somewhere all the headers of the threads
  (not all posts) so that every time it only downloads the new ones??

- show date:
  I would like to the date of the various posts in the summary

- My posts:
  It would be really nice to have a *summary* like buffer where I see
  *ALL* my posts, taken from every possible newsgroup where I posted.
  In this way I always have visible what's the "progress" of my
  answers..

- colors:
  not very important but for example the summary buffer is all one
  color, some more colors would be nice to get more easily the situation.

Here below my current config, some pieces stolen here and there:

;; Tree view for groups.  I like the organisational feel this has.
(add-hook 'gnus-group-mode-hook 'gnus-topic-mode)

;; Threads!  I hate reading un-threaded email -- especially mailing
;; lists.  This helps a ton!
(setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function 
      'gnus-gather-threads-by-subject)

;; Also, I prefer to see only the top level message.  If a message has
;; several replies or is part of a thread, only show the first
;; message.  'gnus-thread-ignore-subject' will ignore the subject and
;; look at 'In-Reply-To:' and 'References:' headers.
(setq gnus-thread-hide-subtree t)
(setq gnus-thread-ignore-subject t)

(add-hook 'message-sent-hook 'gnus-score-followup-thread)

(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)