Re: starting an external command from emacs

[Andy Stewart <lazycat.manatee@gmail.com>]

Hi, Matt!

I recommend you use GNUS, it's more powerful and integration closer with Emacs.

Matt Price <matt.price@utoronto.ca> writes:

> hi,
>
> i'm a not-especially-technical person who uses emacs as a
> straightforward text editor; in fact i'm experimenting with living
> inside emacs most of the time on my main laptop, largely to eliminate
> distractions while i'm writing.  however, some significant fraction of
> the stuff i write is intended to be emailed away.  I'd like to do two
> things:
>
> (1) write a function that takes the contents of the current buffer and
> inserts it into a message; 
> (2) use an external script to query an already-existing contacts
> database (for me it's evolution or gmail), and pass that address on to
> the to-header of the resultant message.
>
> (2) seemed difficult to me.  so what i'm trying right now is to write a
> function that invokes mutt with an address string, then, within mutt,
> use emacsclient as my editor, post-mode as my mode, and insert the text
> into the message body.  This is what i have so far:
>
> (defun start-mutt-with-this-buffer-contents (address)
>         (mark-whole-buffer)
> 	(kill-ring-save) ;; ok this needs a beginning and end but i don't know how to do that
>         (interactive "M") ;; i think that's right
>         (set-buffer (apply 'make-term "Mutt" "mutt" nil (list address))) 
>         (switch-to-buffer "*Mutt*")
> ;; need some kind of "wait for mutt to start composing" thing here
>         (post-goto-body)
>         (yank)
> )
>
>
> the problem with this right now is that the (yank) occurs too early, and
> the yanked text appears in the *Mutt* window, instead of the *Composing*
> window where i want it to appear.  is there a way to tell emacs to wait
> on mutt till the interactive command is finished, then switch tothe
> composing buffer and paste the text in there?  or failing that -- how
> might i query an external database from within emacs?  if i could do
> that, then i guess i could use one of the many already-existing emacs
> mail modes to actually send the message, and provide it with the the
> query result as a to-address.  i have, for instance, a couple of python
> scripts that return a sequence of lines, one email address per line --
> these are designed for use with mutt -- i guess one could put them into
> some kind of minibuffer that would then feed the appropriate choice back
> to an emacs function.  i just don't know how to do that kind of stuff
> myself.  
>
> Thanks in advance for your help!!
>
> matt