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From: tdw@cl.cam.ac.uk (Tim Wilson)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs
Subject: Re: Any interesting .abbrev_defs?
Summary: Abbrevs are convenient alternative to mail aliases
Keywords: mail abbrev alias
Message-ID: <1353@scaup.cl.cam.ac.uk>
Date: 18 Oct 89 10:24:50 GMT
References: <1989Oct17.030717.18759@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
Sender: news@cl.cam.ac.uk
Reply-To: tdw@cl.cam.ac.uk (Tim Wilson)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK
Lines: 67

In article <1989Oct17.030717.18759@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu writes: 

 > Does anyone have interesting .abbrev_defs that they'd like to share with
 > the world?

My .abbrev_defs is probably one of the least worth sharing, but I use
it a lot myself.  I use it to store `mail aliases', instead of using
~/.mailrc, for example (in edit-abbrev format)
	"timw"	       2    "Tim Wilson <tdw@uk.ac.cam.cl>"

I prefer abbrevs to .mailrc aliases since I see the expansion
immediately---and more importantly, I immediately notice the absence
of expansion caused by typos or using aliases I haven't defined.  

What about other mail programs?  The only other mail program I use is
more(1) (faster startup then emacs -f vm), so this point doesn't affect me.

Acknowledgement: The idea was stolen from the Acorn Research Centre
mail reader (ARCmail) for Unipress emacs.

Here's the code:

---- From my .emacs -----------------------------------------------------------
(autoload 'sendmail-abbrev-setup "sendmail-abbrevs"
	  "Load sendmail abbreviations" nil)

(setq mail-mode-hook
      '(lambda ()
	 (sendmail-abbrev-setup)
	 ;; [others omitted]
))
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---- sendmail-abbrevs.el ------------------------------------------------------
;;; Turn on abbrev mode for sendmail, and load abbreviations.
;;; Last edited: Tue Jun  6 08:55:51 1989 by Tim Wilson

(define-abbrev-table 'sendmail-mode-abbrev-table ())

(defun sendmail-abbrev-setup ()
  ;;
  ;; Load abbrevs unless we have done so already
  ;;
  (if (not mail-abbrevs-loaded) 	; Defined in sendmail.el
      (if (file-readable-p abbrev-file-name)
	  (progn
	    (read-abbrev-file abbrev-file-name)	; Ie default abbrev table
	    (setq mail-abbrevs-loaded t))))
  (setq local-abbrev-table sendmail-mode-abbrev-table)
  (abbrev-mode 1))
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ARCmail added the wrinkle that mail alias expansion only took place in
the header.  However, I omitted this feature since I quite often want
to include mail addresses in the body of a message---and anyway, very
few of my abbrevs are English words.

Improved implemention:  How about defining abbrevs equivalent to
.mailrc? (We already have a parser for .mailrc in mailalias.el.)

Improvements and suggestions welcome.

--
Tim Wilson			Janet:  tdw@uk.ac.cam.cl
				Nsfnet: tdw%cl.cam.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
+44 223 334624			Uucp:   ...!mcvax!ukc!cam-cl!tdw