The message-mail-alias-type variable controls
what type of mail alias expansion to use. Currently two forms are
supported: mailabbrev and ecomplete. If
this variable is nil, no mail alias expansion will
be performed.
mailabbrev works by parsing the
/etc/mailrc and ~/.mailrc files. These
files look like:
alias lmi "Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>" alias ding "ding@ifi.uio.no (ding mailing list)"
After adding lines like this to your ~/.mailrc
file, you should be able to just write
‘lmi’ in the To or
Cc (and so on) headers and press SPC to
expand the alias.
No expansion will be performed upon sending of the message—all expansions have to be done explicitly.
If you’re using ecomplete, all addresses
from To and Cc headers will
automatically be put into the ~/.ecompleterc file.
When you enter text in the To and Cc
headers, ecomplete will check out the values stored
there and “electrically” say what completions are
possible. To choose one of these completions, use the
M-n command to move down to the list. Use
M-n and M-p to move down and up the list,
and RET to choose a completion.