NOTE: There's no need to patch abook version 0.4.14 or later.
NOTE2: The command in abook is 'Q' not 'P'.

--- Original message from Brian Medley <brian.medley@verizon.net> ---
Hi,

I am trying to make abook work better (for me) within vim.  I am doing
this because I have 'autoedit' and 'edit_headers' set in mutt.  This
means I would like to have easy access to my abook addressbook (from
within the editor).

To accomplish this I have written a vim plugin (it will need vim 6.0)
and have patched abook.  Both are included.  The patch is against abook
0.4.13.

Amongst other things, they allow me to obtain an address listing from
abook and perform a mutt query using abook.  Below is an example.

Suppose I have the following line (the cursor is at the caret):
    To: 
        ^
I can now hit '\al' to lauch abook.  Once inside, I can highlight the
people I want to email.  Then I hit 'P'.  Their email addresses now
appear.  Next, suppose I have:
    To: john
            ^
My plugin allows the command '\aq' to perform an alias mutt query using
abook.  It uses the word under the cursor, so "john" will be looked up
inside of abook.  Next, his email address will appear.  

Summary:
    \aq => alias query
    \al => alias list

Note:
    - \ is actually LocalLeader
    - I am aware that abook can do these things from within *mutt*, but
      I want to do them from within vim.
    - This plugin does other stuff, as well (like deleting signatures,
      and positioning the cursor when you start) because I stole code
      from Cedric Duval's mail vimrc.
    - Improvements / comments are welcome.

Todo:
    - Documentation :)
    - I tried to write this so that another alias query program could be
      used (e.g. ldap), but I have not implemented this.  

Bugs:
    - I had trouble getting this to work in gvim.  I used vim in a
      console.

Basic Installation:
    - patch and install abook
    - place the mail.vim plugin in ~/.vim/after/ftplugin

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