405190 - address autocomplete does not find card when display name has space and the second word is entered (partial matches for contacts)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 558931

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

STR (use 2.0 or trunk):
- create a card in the address book, set (only) display: "test card" and email [e-mail]
- create a mail, 
  * enter in the address field: test 
   -> this will match the card [everything ok so far]
  * enter in the address field: card
   -> no match :(

If "test" and "card" are entered in first and last name they are found.

Comment 1

[G Piper]

Better explanation of (annoying) bug:

Address book previously would match ANY word or partial word in the name or email portion of the address book card. Now it will only match the beginnning of the name or the beginning of the email address. This has reduced the auto-complete functionality immeasurably.

IE: I used to be able to list out all my gmail recipients by simply typing "gmail" in the TO section of an email, but now I have to know each and everyone's first name to find their email addresses.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

bug 168204 comment 7

Comment 3

[Steve Simms]

I don't think this is the same issue as bug 168204 comment 7.  I can reproduce it even when the E-Mail address doesn't match the text being typed.

G Piper (or anyone else): Do you happen to know in what version autocomplete got changed from any word to initial-only matching?  It'd be good to find out why that change happened, and if it was intentional.

Comment 4

[G Piper]

I'm not sure exactly when it started -- possibly version 2.0.0.4? It is still broken in the current version 2.0.0.16.

Example: have an address in the address book like so:

name or display name: jane doe
email: [e-mail]

About 70% of the time it won't autocomplete if you start typing doe or some, even if it is the only one in the address book. Some of my addresses autocomplete fine, others won't. All mine are entered in with no quotation or punctuation marks of any kind, but some have dashes in the name. The dashes don't seem to be causing it though.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

still see this in v3?

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b5pre) Gecko/20100825 Shredder/3.2a1pre

(In reply to comment #5)
> still see this in v3?

Yes. And it's bad, very. Comment 1 is right:

> Now it will only match the beginnning of the name or the beginning of the 
> email address. This has reduced the auto-complete functionality immeasurably.

...with an extra emphasis on *immeasurably*!

We have several bugs around this about the various aspectual shortcomings of the general problem (and this one doesn't cover them all). What we really need is a new general approach with partial matches on any address-related fields on the card, and I suspect we should do the same as quick filter and treat space separated words in the search as potentially non-adjacent so that users can narrow down on the contact without bothering about the right syntax as it happens to be in the book. Iow, it shouldn't matter if I search for "Jane Doe" or "Doe Jane" (both without quotes, and even "oe ane" should find the thing. Furthermore, we should be tolerant and accept angle brackets to search for the beginning or end of email addresses, like "<foo" or "asdf.com>" to find <[e-mail]>.

This bug only covers a small part of the problem, we need a new (meta) bug for the big fix.

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: testcase: sample address book card (test address book, import as csv)

Here's a testcase that helps to avoid the behaviour analysis traps of a "normal card" where the display name is composed from First Name and Last Name and thus you'll believe to get matches for things we don't actually match.

Play with it and see that we're not matching anything when it comes to partial matches, e.g. we are not matching space-separated second+ words from the display name (this bug): we do NOT actually match "Janette" or "company" if the display name is "Display, Janette (sample company)". But you might not notice because if the first name starts with "Jane", searching for "Jane" will match it because of the first name (not the display name).

Comment 8

[wamster]

I have the same problem and would be grateful if it could be fixed!

Comment 9

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

why this issue isn't a dupe of bug #558931?

Comment 10

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to [:Aureliano Buendía] from comment #9)
> why this issue isn't a dupe of bug #558931?

Magnus ?

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yeah lets dupe, the other bug has more info.