Re: Bugs caused by recent use of define-derived-mode

[Richard Stallman]

One possible idea for conveniently selecting one of the various
local abbrev tables is to specify both the abbrev table and
the abbrev text with the same minibuffer.

The minibuffer would start out with text that specifies the abbrev
table.  You can type text for the abbrev, leaving the abbrev table
name unchanged.  Or you can type M-p to pick a different abbrev table,
and then type text for the abbrev.

The advantage is that this doesn't add an inconvenient extra
minibuffer invocation.

However, it still imposes the burden of choosing which abbrev table.
It is not clear that the benefit is worth this burden.  I think that
having the possibility of separate abbrevs for Mail mode is only a
slight benefit.