Re: New completion mode

[Katsumi Yamaoka <yamaoka@jpl.org>]

Hi,

I began to use ecomplete.el.  Thanks Lars.  That's excellent!
However, I noticed some problems with it.  Here they are:

1.
The regexp used in `message-put-addresses-in-ecomplete' causes
an infloop in XEmacs.  The test case is:

   (gnus-replace-in-string "yamaoka@jpl.org" "^ +\\| *$" "")

It might be due to an XEmacs bug.  Though it seems to be solved
by replacing the regexp with "^ +\\| +$".

2.
The completions list appears only when a user invokes the
`self-insert-command' command.  Especially in Japan, people use
various tools in order to write Japanese text.  Some tools
replace `self-insert-command' with the other command, e.g.,
`egg-self-insert-char', in many keys, and it is used even when
writing ASCII text.  So, we need to make changes in message.el
like the following:

(defcustom message-self-insert-commands '(self-insert-command)
  "List of `self-insert-command's used to trigger ecomplete.
When one of those commands is invoked to enter a character in To or Cc
header, ecomplete will suggest the candidates of recipients (see also
`message-mail-alias-type').  If you use some tool to enter non-ASCII
text and it replaces `self-insert-command' with the other command, e.g.
`egg-self-insert-char', you may want to add it to this list."
  :group 'message-various
  :type '(repeat function))

(defun message-strip-forbidden-properties (begin end &optional old-length)
  "docstring"
  (when (and (eq message-mail-alias-type 'ecomplete)
	     (memq this-command message-self-insert-commands))
    (message-display-abbrev))
[...]

3.
Ecomplete doesn't specify the coding system of the rc file.
Because of this, Emacs asks me a coding system used to save the
rc file whenever I send a mail ever since names which contain
Japanese text and Latin text were registered in the rc file.  To
make matters worse, such contents will be corrupted when XEmacs
saves them to the rc file since XEmacs doesn't have the facility
to determine the proper coding system.  In addition, XEmacs-Mule
will be unable to find a proper coding system to decode the
contents when reading the rc file, either.  I actually have
verified that both happen.

Therefore, I make a proposal to add a variable like
`ecomplete-database-file-coding-system'.  I think the best
choice for the default value is `iso-2022-7bit' which all
Emacsen (with Mule) support.  Putting the coding cookie to the
rc file would also be good.  It enables people to manually edit
the rc file safely and informs non-Mule XEmacs whether the
contents can be used and modified.

4.
Mail-abbrevs is still useful.  So, I use

(add-hook 'message-setup-hook (if (featurep 'xemacs)
				  'mail-aliases-setup
				'mail-abbrevs-setup))

even if I set `message-mail-alias-type' to `ecomplete'.  How
about making this option a list?

Regards,