Addresses book (novice)

Addresses book (novice)

[Keith O'Connell]

Hi,

I have a question about address books. As I work through the wealth of
documentation about emacs/gnus, I find two places mentioned where
addresses can be kept, (I expect there are more).

In ~/.emacs or ~/.gnus in the form;

        (define-mail-alias "kkk" "kroc@blueyonder.co.uk")

or in ~/.mailrc in the form

        alias keith	kroc@blueyonder.co.uk

Now, assuming I have in ~/.emacs, the following line;

        (add-hook 'mail-mode-hook 'mail-abbrevs-setup)

1: Why do addresses from the ~/.mailrc expand and the ones in ~/.emacs
   not?

2: Which is the best method for keeping addresses, and why?  Is there
   a better way

Keith
-- 
Keith.    
 [Debian Woody & GNU Emacs 21.2.1 - Gnus v5.9.0]

Re: Addresses book (novice)

[Dan Griswold]

Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I have a question about address books.

<<various examples/questions snipped>>

> 2: Which is the best method for keeping addresses, and why?  Is
> there a better way
>

Have you tried the BBDB? http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/


-- 
--------------
Dan Griswold
Carrollton, TX
--------------

Re: Addresses book (novice)

[Keith O'Connell]

>>>>> "Dan" == Dan Griswold <dangriswold@earthlink.net> writes:

    >> 2: Which is the best method for keeping addresses, and why?  Is
    >> there a better way

    Dan> Have you tried the BBDB? http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/

I had a brief look. I got the impression that it was great for hundreds
of contact details, but otherwise it was overkill. Am I wrong? Is that
the address book of choice for those in the know?

-- 
Keith.    
 [Debian Woody & GNU Emacs 21.2.1 - Gnus v5.9.0]

Re: Addresses book (novice)

[Dan Griswold]

Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

>>>>>> "Dan" == Dan Griswold <dangriswold@earthlink.net> writes:
>
>     Dan> Have you tried the BBDB? http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
>
> I had a brief look. I got the impression that it was great for hundreds
> of contact details, but otherwise it was overkill. Am I wrong? Is that
> the address book of choice for those in the know?

I don't think it's overkill, because to my mind "overkill" implies
something that's resource hungry or complicated to use. Neither of
these is true, in my opinion. Once BBDB is set up to work with gnus
(and there are numerous helps available for that), it works seamlessly
and inconspicuously in the background. Adding addresses is easy, and
autocompletion of partial addresses in the To: field (much like the
aliases you were setting up) is also easy.

BBDB _is_ "great for hundreds of contact details," but it's also great
for a tiny few. I'm not sure one would notice a difference either way.

As far as "for those in the know," I think a lot of gnus users run
BBDB, but I have no firm data for that.

Peace,

Dan

-- 
--------------
Dan Griswold
Carrollton, TX
--------------

Re: Addresses book (novice)

[Charles Muller]

Regarding BBDB, the below site may also be of interest:

http://t2100cdt.kippona.net/linux/emacs/mew/

Regards,

Chuck

---------------------------
Charles Muller  <acmuller@gol.com>
Faculty of Humanities,  Toyo Gakuen University
Digital Dictionary of Buddhism and CJKV-English Dictionary [http://www.acmuller.net]
H-Buddhism List Editor [http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~buddhism/]
Mobile Phone: 090-9310-1787

Re: Addresses book (novice)

[Keith O'Connell]

>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Muller <acmuller@gol.com> writes:

    Charles> Regarding BBDB, the below site may also be of interest:
    Charles> http://t2100cdt.kippona.net/linux/emacs/mew/

OK - Thanks. I'll have a look

Keith
-- 
Keith.    
 [Debian Woody & GNU Emacs 21.2.1 - Gnus v5.9.0]

Re: Addresses book (novice)

[Dan Griswold]

Keith O'Connell <kroc@blueyonder.co.uk> writes:

>>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Muller <acmuller@gol.com> writes:
>
>     Charles> Regarding BBDB, the below site may also be of interest:
>     Charles> http://t2100cdt.kippona.net/linux/emacs/mew/
>
> OK - Thanks. I'll have a look
>
> Keith
> -- 
> Keith.    
>  [Debian Woody & GNU Emacs 21.2.1 - Gnus v5.9.0]

Actually, since you seem to be using Gnus (judging from the headers in
your message), you'd want BBDB info for Gnus, not for mew. This is
pulled from the bbdb manual:

-----

 1.1.4.1 Initializing BBDB support for Gnus

To take advantage of the Gnus features of the BBDB, add one of the
following forms to your Emacs configuration file:

For Gnus 3.14 or older:

(add-hook 'gnus-Startup-hook 'bbdb-insinuate-gnus)

For Gnus 3.15 or newer:

(add-hook 'gnus-startup-hook 'bbdb-insinuate-gnus)

bbdb-insinuate-gnus adds bindings for the default keys to Gnus and
configures Gnus to notify the BBDB when new messages are loaded. This
notification is required if the BBDB is to be able to display BBDB
entries for messages displayed in Gnus. 

----

although I have these lines in my .gnus.el:

(require 'bbdb)
(require 'bbdb-gnus)
(bbdb-initialize 'gnus 'message)

(setq gnus-summary-line-format
      "%U%R%4d [%4k](%2t):  %I%(%[%-16,16uB%]%) %s\n")



Cheers,

Dan

-- 
--------------
Dan Griswold
Carrollton, TX
--------------

Re: Addresses book (novice)

[Keith O'Connell]

Hi,

        I have spent the last few hours tinkering with bbdb and it
        looks like it is what I want.

        Once I got past the US phone number parsing problem, and got
        through what I have to say is not the best of manuals, I got
        it to work and I think I like it

        Thanks all
-- 
Keith.    
 [Debian Woody & GNU Emacs 21.2.1 - Gnus v5.9.0]

Re: Addresses book (novice)

[Kevin Rodgers]

Keith O'Connell wrote:

> In ~/.emacs or ~/.gnus in the form;
> 
>         (define-mail-alias "kkk" "kroc@blueyonder.co.uk")
> 
> or in ~/.mailrc in the form
> 
>         alias keith	kroc@blueyonder.co.uk
> 
> Now, assuming I have in ~/.emacs, the following line;
> 
>         (add-hook 'mail-mode-hook 'mail-abbrevs-setup)
> 
> 1: Why do addresses from the ~/.mailrc expand and the ones in ~/.emacs
>    not?


Because you used define-mail-alias instead of define-mail-abbrev.


> 2: Which is the best method for keeping addresses, and why?  Is there
>    a better way

The .mailrc format is also read by the Unix command line MUAs.  But as
others have pointed out, BBDB is even better for Emacs.

-- 
<a href="mailto:&lt;kevin.rodgers&#64;ihs.com&gt;">Kevin Rodgers</a>