Re: standard replies made easy

["François Pinard" <pinard@iro.umontreal.ca>]

Stefan Waldherr <stefan@waldherr.org> writes:

> I wrote a quick and dirty thing that helps people insert a predefined
> text into a reply.  It is intended for people who are sick of giving the
> same answer to a number of people.  The file should be self-explanatory.

Not that I'm sick of giving the same answer to a number of people, I'm
quite patient for such things, or at least, I hope so :-).  However,
it saves me some time being able to use canned sentences or paragaphs,
which time may be reinvested more usefully.

I rather just use this in my `emacs':

======================================================================>
(define-abbrev-table 'mail-mode-abbrev-table '(

    ;;; Maintenance - messages with signature.

    ("mack" "\
I'm filing your report.  Let me write to you again when the time comes
for me to work on this problem.  My work queue is lengthy, it may take
a good while.  But I'm not forgetting you.  Thanks for caring!

-- The maintainer" nil 0)

    ("mdone" "\
I think this has already been fixed in the sources, here.  In any case,
let me thank you for reporting this problem.  Please confirm it is solved
when the next version comes out, or send a new bug report if not.

-- The maintainer" nil 0)

;;; [and so forth, I have many of those...]

    ))
======================================================================<

and whenever I compose a message, I just type mack, mdone, or any other such
things, at point where needed.  It is useful being able to assemble a reply
out of many pre-canned fragments.  Nobody has been offended so far.  (Hmph,
not quite...  _One_ user replied to me with nothing else than a big ASCII
drawing of a closed hand, with the middle finger pointing towards heaven! :-)

-- 
François Pinard                            mailto:pinard@iro.umontreal.ca
Join the free Translation Project!    http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard