Re: How does one use ecomplete?

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org> writes:
> Well, I don't know how I use TAB for ecomplete (it might be
> because I don't use message-x).  I use neither EUDC nor BBDB,
> but use mail-abbrevs[1] (of which database is ~/.mailrc) and

TAB in message-mode is bound to `message-tab', which for a To: header
by default ends up calling `message-expand-name'.

I think maybe message-expand-name should complete mail aliases (e.g., by
calling `mail-complete'), but it doesn't.  This is it's current
definition:

   (defun message-expand-name ()
     (if (fboundp 'bbdb-complete-name)
         (bbdb-complete-name)
       (expand-abbrev)))

Changing it to:

   (defun message-expand-name ()
     (if (fboundp 'bbdb-complete-name)
         (bbdb-complete-name)
       (and (mail-complete nil) 
            (expand-abbrev))))

Seems to make it work more naturally for me, but I don't know if it's
really the right thing to do...

The "(and (mail-complete nil) (expand-abbrev))" makes it call
expand-abbrev if the preceeding word is a valid alias and was not
expanded by mail-complete -- so hitting TAB once on a unique prefix of
some alias will complete it to the full alias name, and hitting TAB
again (or any other abbrev-expanding key) will then actually expand that
alias.  This seems pretty reasonable behavior to me.

-Miles

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