MH aliases are used in the same way in MH-E as they are in MH. Any alias listed as a recipient will be expanded when the message is sent. This chapter discusses other things you can do with aliases in MH-E.
The following commands
are available in MH-Letter mode with the exception of
mh-alias-reload which can be called from anywhere.
mh-letter-complete-or-space).
mh-letter-complete).
The ‘mh-alias’ customization group contains options associated with aliases.
mh-alias-completion-ignore-case-flagmh-alias-expand-aliases-flagmh-alias-flash-on-commamh-alias-insert-filemh-alias-insertion-locationmh-alias-local-usersmh-alias-local-users-prefix"local.".
mh-alias-passwd-gecos-comma-separator-flagThe following hook is available.
mh-alias-reloaded-hookmh-alias-reload after loading
aliases (default: nil).You can use aliases when you are adding recipients to a message.
In order
to use minibuffer prompting for recipients and the subject line
in the minibuffer, turn on the option
mh-compose-prompt-flag (see Composing), and use the
<TAB> (minibuffer-complete) command to
complete aliases (and optionally local logins) when prompted for
the recipients. Turn on the option
mh-alias-expand-aliases-flag if you want these
aliases to be expanded to their respective addresses in the
draft.
Otherwise, you can
complete aliases in the header of the draft with
M-<TAB> (mh-letter-complete) or
<SPC> (mh-letter-complete-or-space).
As MH ignores case in the aliases, so too does MH-E.
However, you may turn off the option
mh-alias-completion-ignore-case-flag to make case
significant which can be used to segregate completion of your
aliases. You might use uppercase for mailing lists and lowercase
for people. For example, you might have:
mark.baushke: Mark Baushke <mdb@stop.mail-abuse.org>
MH-E: MH-E Mailing List <mh-e-devel@stop.mail-abuse.org>
When this option is turned off, if you were to type M in the ‘To:’ field and then M-<TAB>, then you'd get the list; if you started with m and then entered M-<TAB>, then you'd get Mark's address. Note that this option affects completion only. If you were to enter Mark.Baushke, it would still be identified with your ‘mark.baushke’ alias.
To verify
that the alias you've entered is valid, the alias will be
displayed in the minibuffer when you type a comma
(mh-letter-confirm-address or
mh-alias-minibuffer-confirm-address if the option
mh-compose-prompt-flag is turned on). See Composing. This behavior can be
controlled with the option mh-alias-flash-on-comma
which provides three choices: ‘Flash but Don't Warn If No Alias’,
‘Flash and Warn If No
Alias’, and ‘Don't Flash Nor Warn If No Alias’.
For another way to verify the alias expansion, see Checking Recipients.
MH-E loads aliases for completion and folder name hints from various places. It uses the MH command ali1 to read aliases from the files listed in the profile component ‘Aliasfile:’ as well as system-wide aliases (for example, /etc/nmh/MailAliases).
In addition, aliases are created from /etc/passwd entries with a user ID larger than a magical number, typically 200. This can be a handy tool on a machine where you and co-workers exchange messages. These aliases have the form ‘local.first.last’ if a real name is present in the password file. Otherwise, the alias will have the form ‘local.login’.
The
prefix ‘local.’ can be modified via the option
mh-alias-local-users-prefix. This option can also be
set to ‘Use
Login’.
For example, consider the following password file entry:
psg:x:1000:1000:Peter S Galbraith,,,:/home/psg:/bin/tcsh
The
following settings of option
mh-alias-local-users-prefix will produce the
associated aliases:
"local."""Use Login
In the example above, commas are used to separate different
values within the so-called GECOS field. This is a fairly common
usage. However, in the rare case that the GECOS field in your
password file is not separated by commas and whose contents may
contain commas, you can turn the option
mh-alias-passwd-gecos-comma-separator-flag off.
If you're on a
system with thousands of users you don't know, and the loading of
local aliases slows MH-E down noticeably, then the local alias
feature can be disabled by turning off the option
mh-alias-local-users. This option also takes a
string which is executed to generate the password file. For
example, use ‘ypcat
passwd’ to obtain the NIS password file.
Since
aliases are updated frequently, MH-E reloads aliases
automatically whenever an alias lookup occurs if an alias source
has changed. However, you can reload your aliases manually by
calling the command M-x mh-alias-reload directly. This
command runs mh-alias-reloaded-hook after the
aliases have been loaded.
In the past, you have manually added aliases to your alias file(s) listed in your ‘Aliasfile:’ profile component. MH-E provides other methods for maintaining your alias file(s).
You can use the M-x mh-alias-add-alias command which will prompt you for the alias and address that you would like to add. If the alias exists already, you will have the choice of inserting the new alias before or after the old alias. In the former case, this alias will be used when sending mail to this alias. In the latter case, the alias serves as an additional folder name hint when filing messages (see Folder Selection).
Earlier, the alias prefix ‘local’ was presented. You can use other prefixes to organize your aliases or disambiguate entries. You might use prefixes for locales, jobs, or activities. For example, I have:
; Work
attensity.don.mitchell: Don Mitchell <dmitchell@stop.mail-abuse.com>
isharp.don.mitchell: Don Mitchell <donaldsmitchell@stop.mail-abuse.com>
...
; Sport
diving.ken.mayer: Ken Mayer <kmayer@stop.mail-abuse.com>
sailing.mike.maloney: Mike Maloney <mmaloney@stop.mail-abuse.com>
...
; Personal
ariane.kolkmann: Ariane Kolkmann <ArianeKolkmann@stop.mail-abuse.com>
...
Using prefixes instead of postfixes helps you explore aliases during completion. If you forget the name of an old dive buddy, you can enter ‘div’ and then <SPC> to get a listing of all your dive buddies.
An alias for the sender of the current message is added automatically by clicking on the ‘Grab From alias’ tool bar button or by running the M-x mh-alias-grab-from-field command. Aliases for other recipients of the current message are added by placing your cursor over the desired recipient and giving the M-x mh-alias-add-address-under-point command.
The
options mh-alias-insert-file and
mh-alias-insertion-location controls how and where
these aliases are inserted.
The default
setting of option mh-alias-insert-file is
‘Use Aliasfile Profile
Component’. This option can also hold the
name of a file or a list a file names. If this option is set to a
list of file names, or the ‘Aliasfile:’ profile component contains
more than one file name, MH-E will prompt for one of them.
The
option mh-alias-insertion-location is set to
‘Alphabetical’
by default. If you organize your alias file in other ways, then
the settings ‘Top’ and ‘Bottom’ might be more appropriate.
If you can't quite remember an alias, you can use M-x mh-alias-apropos to show all aliases or addresses that match a regular expression (see the section Syntax of Regular Expressions in The GNU Emacs Manual).