2009-08-16 Rediscovering .mailrc

My old laptop will only run Firefox 2 and I’m too lazy to attempt and build a new binary. That means its Javascript implementation is very slow, and that means that Gmail is getting too slow to use. I started to use Gnus again. Yesterday I discovered how aggravating it is to send a new mail instead of replying to one. You have to actually know email addresses! Gaaah!

=> Gnus

Via help on the TAB key I discovered that the function in question is message-expand-name, which in turn run expand-abbrev. And via the Mail Aliases section in the Message manual I learnt about mailabbrev, the package that parses the ~/.mailrc file and creates all the abbreviations. Once I started looking for it I discovered that I actually already had a ~/.mailrc file – I must have created it ages ago. The first thing I did was delete all entries except for family and close friends. 😄

Now, I define an alias as follows:

alias Alex "Alex Schroeder "

When I type “alex” TAB in a header field of a new mail, this gets expanded. Remember to use message-mode, not mail-mode! But what if I type “al” TAB and want to be told about the existing “alex” alias?

;; override the simple defun provided
(defadvice message-expand-name (after or-complete-alias activate)
  "Complete alias at point if it could not be expanded."
  (unless ad-return-value
    (mail-abbrev-complete-alias)))

So now I type “al” TAB and see the list of aliases that start with “al”, or this gets completed to the only matching alias, “alex”, and when I press TAB again, that is expanded into the real email address.

If only I knew how to make this a cycling expansion... 😄

​#Emacs ​#Gnus

Comments

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⁂

You can also use BBDB with Gnus, which provides email address expansion as well. I have this in my ~/.emacs.el:

=> BBDB

(require 'bbdb)
(bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message 'w3)
(add-hook 'message-setup-hook 'bbdb-define-all-aliases)

– Andreas Rottmann 2009-08-26 13:13 UTC

=> Andreas Rottmann

Yes, many ages ago I was in fact one of the BBDB developpers. As I’m slowly creeping back into Gnus territory, I dread to dive into it head-first... 😄

– Alex Schroeder 2009-08-26 15:50 UTC

=> Alex Schroeder