Re: mailabbrev.el, mailalias.el and related package.

[Luc Teirlinck]

I do not know whether I should actually post this to this thread or
to  "expanding mail aliases too aggressive (.mailrc)".  Also, maybe
additional people should get a CC?

Concerning the effect of my package on the two problems reported in 
"expanding mail aliases too aggressive (.mailrc)":

        In .mailrc I used to have this entry:

            alias gnu <address@hidden>

        Now, when I type

            To: address@hidden

        it gets expanded to

            To: emacs-devel@<address@hidden>

I may be misunderstanding the above, but I can not only not reproduce
this in Emacs20.7 built with my package, I can also not reproduce it
in Emacs21.1.90 without any of my package included in it.

        Wondering when my .mailrc entries were transferred to
        (define-abbrev-table 'mail-abbrevs '(...)) in  ~/.abbrev_defs;
        was
        this
        a one time action or does Emacs maintain this list?

        Whenever Emacs decides to modify user files in tell the user
        about it
        (through a message dialog the user is considered to confirm)
        and add a
        comment.

The current mailabbrev.el needs to write mailabbrevs in
~/.abbrevs_defs, because that is the only way it can save them.  Of
course aliases defined in .mailrc are already stored there, but
mailabbrev needs to worry about aliases defined in other ways.  My
package would change that totally, because it would have all aliases
defined in .mailrc.  It would still use abbrevs internally, but these
would be essentially invisible to users.

Conflicts between the two types of aliases were a source of bugs.