Re: mailabbrev.el, mailalias.el and related package.

[Richard Stallman]

            Now, when I type

                To: address@hidden

            it gets expanded to

                To: emacs-devel@<address@hidden>

I reproduced the failure, and fixed it by changing the syntax
of @.  However, a subsequent message pointed out that other more
obscure problem cases remain.  I think the place to fix them is in
the pre-abbrev-expand-hook function.  It can check the context carefully,
I think, and prevent expansion in inappropriate circumstances.

    The current mailabbrev.el needs to write mailabbrevs in
    ~/.abbrevs_defs, because that is the only way it can save them.  Of
    course aliases defined in .mailrc are already stored there, but
    mailabbrev needs to worry about aliases defined in other ways.

That is a bug, which I fixed recently by labeling abbrevs read
from .mailrc as "system abbrevs" (a new feature).

      My
    package would change that totally, because it would have all aliases
    defined in .mailrc.  It would still use abbrevs internally, but these
    would be essentially invisible to users.

That is good.  mailabbrev should never store these in .abbrev_defs.