- There are several header fields you can use in the `*mail*' buffer.
-Each header field starts with a field name at the beginning of a line,
-terminated by a colon. It does not matter whether you use upper or
-lower case in the field name. After the colon and optional whitespace
-comes the contents of the field.
-
-`To'
- This field contains the mailing addresses of the message.
-
-`Subject'
- The contents of the `Subject' field should be a piece of text that
- says what the message is about. Subject fields are useful because
- most mail-reading programs can provide a summary of messages,
- listing the subject of each message but not its text.
-
-`CC'
- This field contains additional mailing addresses to send the
- message to, but whose readers should not regard the message as
- addressed to them.
-
-`BCC'
- This field contains additional mailing addresses to send the
- message to, but which should not appear in the header of the
- message actually sent.
-
-`FCC'
- This field contains the name of one file (in Unix mail file
- format) to which a copy of the message should be appended when the
- message is sent.
-
-`From'
- Use the `From' field to say who you are, when the account you are
- using to send the mail is not your own. The contents of the
- `From' field should be a valid mailing address, since replies will
- normally go there.
-
-`Reply-To'
- Use the `Reply-To' field to direct replies to a different address,
- not your own. `From' and `Reply-To' have the same effect on where
- replies go, but they convey a different meaning to the person who
- reads the message.
-
-`In-Reply-To'
- This field contains a piece of text describing a message you are
- replying to. Some mail systems can use the information to
- correlate related pieces of mail. This field is normally filled
- in by your mail handling package when you are replying to a
- message and you never need to think about it.
-
-The `To', `CC', `BCC' and `FCC' fields can appear any number of times,
-to specify many places to send the message.
-
-The `To', `CC', and `BCC', fields can have continuation lines. All the
-lines starting with whitespace, following the line on which the field
-starts, are considered part of the field. For example,
-
- To: foo@here, this@there,
- me@gnu.cambridge.mass.usa.earth.spiral3281
-
-If you have a `~/.mailrc' file, Emacs scans it for mail aliases the
-first time you try to send mail in an Emacs session. Emacs expands
-aliases found in the `To', `CC', and `BCC' fields where appropriate.
-You can set the variable `mail-abbrev-mailrc-file' to the name of the
-file with mail aliases. If `nil', `~/.mailrc' is used.
-
- Your `.mailrc' file ensures that word-abbrevs are defined for each
-of your mail aliases when point is in a `To', `CC', `BCC', or `From'
-field. The aliases are defined in your `.mailrc' file or in a file
-specified by the MAILRC environment variable if it exists. Your mail
-aliases expand any time you type a word-delimiter at the end of an
-abbreviation.
-
- In this version of Emacs, what you see is what you get: in contrast
-to some other versions, no abbreviations are expanded after you have
-sent the mail. This means you don't suffer the annoyance of having the
-system do things behind your back -- if the system rewrites an address
-you typed, you know it immediately, instead of after the mail has been
-sent and it's too late to do anything about it. For example, you will
-never again be in trouble because you forgot to delete an old alias
-from your `.mailrc' and a new local user is given a userid which
-conflicts with one of your aliases.
-
- Your mail alias abbrevs are in effect only when point is in an
-appropriate header field. The mail aliases will not expand in the body
-of the message, or in other header fields. The default mode-specific
-abbrev table `mail-mode-abbrev-table' is used instead if defined. That
-means if you have been using mail-mode specific abbrevs, this code will
-not adversely affect you. You can control which header fields the
-abbrevs are used in by changing the variable `mail-abbrev-mode-regexp'.
-
- If auto-fill mode is on, abbrevs wrap at commas instead of at word
-boundaries, and header continuation lines will be properly indented.
-
- You can also insert a mail alias with
-`mail-interactive-insert-alias'. This function, which is bound to `C-c
-C-a', prompts you for an alias (with completion) and inserts its
-expansion at point.
-
- In this version of Emacs, it is possible to have lines like the
-following in your `.mailrc' file:
-
- alias someone "John Doe <doe@quux.com>"
-
- That is, if you want an address to have embedded spaces, simply
-surround it with double-quotes. The quotes are necessary because the
-format of the `.mailrc' file uses spaces as address delimiters.
-
- Aliases in the `.mailrc' file may be nested. For example, assume you
-define aliases like:
- alias group1 fred ethel
- alias group2 larry curly moe
- alias everybody group1 group2
-
- When you now type `everybody' on the `To' line, it will expand to:
- fred, ethyl, larry, curly, moe
-
- Aliases may contain forward references; the alias of `everybody' in
-the example above can precede the aliases of `group1' and `group2'.
-
- In this version of Emacs, you can use the `source' `.mailrc' command
-for reading aliases from some other file as well.
-
- Aliases may contain hyphens, as in `"alias foo-bar foo@bar"', even
-though word-abbrevs normally cannot contain hyphens.
-
- To read in the contents of another `.mailrc'-type file from Emacs,
-use the command `M-x merge-mail-aliases'. The `rebuild-mail-aliases'
-command is similar, but deletes existing aliases first.
-
- If you want multiple addresses separated by a string other than `,'
-(a comma), then set the variable `mail-alias-seperator-string' to it.
-This has to be a comma bracketed by whitespace if you want any kind of
-reasonable behavior.
-
- If the variable `mail-archive-file-name' is non-`nil', it should be
-a string naming a file. Each time you start to edit a message to send,
-an `FCC' field is entered for that file. Unless you remove the `FCC'
-field, every message is written into that file when it is sent.