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From: pierson@encore.com (Dan L. Pierson)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: Auto copy in vm
Message-ID: <PIERSON.90Apr11110714@xenna.encore.com>
Date: 11 Apr 90 15:07:14 GMT
References: <CHITTAMU.90Apr8164216@quincy.cs.umass.edu>
Sender: news@Encore.COM
Distribution: comp
Organization: Encore Computer Corporation
Lines: 59
In-reply-to: chittamu@quincy.cs.umass.edu's message of 9 Apr 90 00:42:00 GMT

On 9 Apr 90 00:42:00 GMT,
chittamu@quincy.cs.umass.edu (Satish Chittamuru) said:
> In BSD mail I like the feature of having all my out-going messages recorded
> automatically using
>         set record="filepath/filename"

In youre .emacs:

(setq mail-archive-file-name (expand-file-name "~/VM/sent-mail"))

> Also, does vm read my .mailrc to setup aliases ? I don't think I want to
> muck around with .emacs file everytime I want to add an alias(if it possible
> to do so at all). Oflate my .emacs file is becoming a file_of_all_trades.

VM (actually sendmail, VM reads mail but punts sending to the standard
sender shipped with Emacs) reads my .mailrc just fine.  Unfortunately,
it only reads it the first time I send mail; changes won't be noticed
in the same Emacs session.  

A quick look at the sources reveals that aliases are actually set up
by build-mail-aliases (a non interactive command in mailalias.el) iff
the variable mail-aliases is exactly t.  There is also a command
define-mail-alias to interactively add an alias for the current
session (but not save it in .mailrc).  So it looks like the way to
change your aliases while Emacs is running is:

    Edit .mailrc
    M-ESC (build-mail-aliases)

You could package this with something like:

(defun add-mail-aliases ()
  "Edit ~/.mailrc and rebuild aliases."
  (interactive)
  (save-window-excursion
    (find-file (expand-file-name "~/.mailrc"))
    (recursive-edit))
  (build-mail-aliases))

Here are the relevant paragraphs from the GNU Emacs manual:

    If you have a `~/.mailrc' file, Emacs will scan it for mail aliases
    the first time you try to send mail in an Emacs session.  Aliases found
    in the `To', `CC', and `BCC' fields will be expanded where
    appropriate.

      If the variable `mail-archive-file-name' is non-`nil', it should be a
    string naming a file; every time you start to edit a message to send,
    an `FCC' field will be put in for that file.  Unless you remove the
    `FCC' field, every message will be written into that file when it is
    sent.

--

                                            dan

In real life: Dan Pierson, Encore Computer Corporation, Research
UUCP: {talcott,linus,necis,decvax}!encore!pierson
Internet: pierson@encore.com