29158 - Better conversion of name/addresses from mail headers to contact in "Collected Addresses"

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[Richard Zach]

The conversion of anme/email strings from mail headers to address book cards
should be made to handle special cases.  Right now, the last word in the name
string gets to be the last name, the rest the first name.  This is problematic for:

1. suffixes, e.g., "Ph.D.", "M.D.", "Jr." etc.
("John Doe, Jr." gets converted to (first; last): John Doe; Jr. but should be
John;Doe, Jr.)
2. last names with "van", "de", "della", etc.
("John von Doe" gets converted to John von;Doe but should be John;von Doe)
3. Forwarded emails
"John Doe (by way of Jane Doe <[e-mail]>)" gets converted to: John Doe (by
way of Jane Doe; <[e-mail]>

Linux build 2000.02.24.08

Comment 1

[hangas]

Who wants to take this one?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Comment 2

[Phil Peterson]

Is this really our code doing this? I bet it's the vcard code. If it is, one
approach might be to investigate an upgrade of our old vcard code to a newer
version.

In general, I think vcards are pretty low priority, though. In a pinch, I could
imagine cutting them.

Comment 3

[Richard Zach]

This isn't about vCards, but about how you convert the name/email address
information from a mail header (when you choose "Add to address book" from the
context menu) to a *address book* card.

Comment 4

[Scott MacGregor]

zach, we haven't implemented the Add To Addressbook item yet. It didn't make the
PDT cut. Look for it after beta1. But when we do that, we'll take the email
address, try to extract a first and last name if present from it and bring up a
pre-filled address book card with those values pre-filled.

Comment 5

[Richard Zach]

What I meant to say was: conversion of name/addresses from mail headers to the
"Collected Addresses" abook.  I don't think it's terribly important, but would
be nice if it worked correctly.

I thought of another special case: I've sometimes seen people give their name as
"LAST First" (last name in all caps).

Comment 6

[Phil Peterson]

> This isn't about vCards

I think it is, at least in some circumstances. Add-to-address-book works (or at 
least it used to) by building a vcard out of the recipients, and then catenating 
the URL-encoded vcard onto an addrbook URL. This probably doesn't apply to the 
new Collected Addresses feature, but it probably does apply to the dialog box 
you get when you add someone to your address book.

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

the collected address code uses the same rfc822 address parser as the add to
address book code, I would think. The difference is that the add to address book
feature gives the user a chance to edit the proposed card.

Comment 8

[hangas]

Looks like nobody owns this issue, so I am taking bug.

Comment 9

[hangas]

Mass moving to M17

Comment 10

[hangas]

Mass move mailnews bugs to Putterman.  Ouch.

Comment 11

[selmer (gone)]

Mail Review recommends not in this release.  Marking M20.

Comment 12

[lchiang]

move to future milestone

Comment 13

[scottputterman]

reassigning to chuang.

Comment 14

[scottputterman]

reassigning to cavin

Comment 15

[Arun Prasannan (polar)]

This bug is being marked EXPIRED as it has seen no activity in a very long time.

If you think that the issue reported might still be relevant, please test with a recent release of SeaMonkey and if the problem persists feel free to re-open the report. Thank you.

http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Comment 16

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Bulk reopening incorrectly expired bugs - no activity does not constitute no bug - these need proper checking.