Message, Gnus and bbdb

[dsg@linus.mitre.org (David S. Goldberg)]

I've been using Kai's message-x for quite some time now.  I had made
my own function for doing completion using Peter Galbraith's
e-mh-alias package.  As I am cleaning out the last vestiges of MH in
my Gnus usage, last week I decided to give bbdb a try.  I reset
message-x to use bbdb-complete-name for the to and cc headers.  One
thing I saw in the bbdb info that interested me was the ability to use
a mail-alias property to maintain mailing lists.  Unfortunately I
can't seem to get bbdb-complete-name to recognize the names I put in
these aliases, so while I can do completion/alias expansion on
individuals, my lists are not available to me.  I realize I could just
make separate entries for the lists, but that seems wrong somehow...

On another note, I don't understand how the bbdb auto-creation feature
is supposed to work.  I've added a call to my gnus-select-group-hook
such that a few of my nnml groups have bbdb/news-auto-create-p turned
on.  I can verify that that works (that is, the variable is properly
set to t in those groups, nil in all the others).  However, when I
read new messages in these groups, nothing seems to happen with bbdb.
I can type : or ; and be prompted to create an entry for the current
message.  What am I missing to get the automatic stuff?  Or am I just
misunderstanding what's supposed to happen?

Any advice greatly appreiciated.

--
Dave Goldberg
Post: The Mitre Corporation\MS B305\202 Burlington Rd.\Bedford, MA 01730
Phone: 617-271-3887
Email: dsg@mitre.org