The message-mail-alias-type variable controls what type of mail
alias expansion to use. Currently two forms are supported:
mailabbrev and ecomplete. If this variable is
nil, no mail alias expansion will be performed.
mailabbrev works by parsing the /etc/mailrc and
~/.mailrc files. These files look like:
alias lmi "Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>" alias ding "ding@ifi.uio.no (ding mailing list)"
After adding lines like this to your ~/.mailrc file, you should
be able to just write ‘lmi’ in the To or CC (and so
on) headers and press SPC to expand the alias.
No expansion will be performed upon sending of the message—all expansions have to be done explicitly.
If you’re using ecomplete, all addresses from To and
CC headers will automatically be put into the
~/.ecompleterc file. When you enter text in the To and
CC headers, ecomplete will check out the values stored
there and “electrically” say what completions are possible. To
choose one of these completions, use the M-n command to move
down to the list. Use DOWN or M-n and
UP or M-p to move down and up the list, and
RET to choose a completion.
The ecomplete-sort-predicate variable controls how
ecomplete matches are sorted.