578577 - Unable to have first name before last name in Mac OS X Address Book backed address book

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[Mitar]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2.4) Gecko/20100608 Thunderbird/3.1

I want to use my Mac OS X Address Book in Thunderbird but display names in Thunderbird are shown with last name first. I would like them to have first name first.

Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
It should be configurable how should display name be structured from Mac OS X Address Book, with first name first or last. Or at least it should match how this is displayed in Mac OS X Address Book. (And match that if this is changed there.)

I have:
mail.addr_book.displayName.autoGeneration = true
mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst = false
mail.addr_book.lastnamefirst = 0

Mac OS X 10.5.8

Comment 1

[Mitar]

As I see in code it should take order from Mac OS X Address Book. Maybe there should simply exist an option to override the order of first an last name for displayed name in Thunderbird.

Comment 2

[David von Oheimb]

For me, using Thunderbird 3.1.9 on Mac OS 10.6.6, first name is given first.
So cannot reproduce the above problem.

Comment 3

[David von Oheimb]

For me, using Thunderbird 3.1.9 on Mac OS 10.6.6, first name is given first.
So cannot reproduce the above problem.

Comment 4

[Mitar]

So if you have last name first in Address Book, you can configure Thunderbird to have display name with first name first?

Comment 5

[David von Oheimb]

So you have set the Mac address book to show last names first - this part of the story was missing. When I do the same, I also get the Display Names shown in the Thunderbird address book as "last name first", regardless of the setting of mail.addr_book.lastnamefirst and of mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst.
I find it a bit strange that you want to use different settings for the Mac address book and Thunderbird.

BTW, according to http://preferential.mozdev.org/preferences.html,
addr_book.lastnamefirst only affects the order for sorting. On the other hand,
mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst just means that when *generating* a display name field (for a new card, when the user enters the values of first and last name), use format "Lastname, Firstname"? rather than "Firstname Lastname". So it does not strictly affect the display behavior, but the generation of the Display Name field contents.

I'd suggest marking this bug as invalid.

Comment 6

[Mitar]

What I would like is to have in Mac address book people listed by the last name. It is much easier for me to find them this way. But then, when sending an e-mail to somebody, I would like that in To field first name is first. This looks more personal and nicer to me. So this is why I would like two different types of displaying because there are two different use cases.

So To field is generated from display field. And I would like that it would be configurable (if mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst is not already this) how it generates this display name.

I have checked the code and in mailnews/addrbook/src/nsAbOSXCard.mm there is some code, around "Use the order used in the OS X address book to set DisplayName" comment, which explicitly orders display name (when it is constructing it) in the same way as it is displayed in Mac address book. I think it should check mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst preference or with at least mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst should be possible to override this behavior. As generation of the display name field contents is done there. Or maybe some other settings.

Why invalid? Then it should at least become a feature request.

Comment 7

[David von Oheimb]

Hi again Mitar,
in the Preferences of the Mac OS Address book, you can set "Show first name before last name" and simultaneously set "Sort by last name". This should give what you want. Regardless how you set the latter (and also regardless whether Thunderbird's mail.addr_book.lastnamefirst is 0 or 1), when you use an entry when composing an email, it will be displayed last name first. So I still see this bugzilla entry as invalid, both when seen as bug or seen as feature request.

Comment 8

[David von Oheimb]

Oops, a correction of what I just wrote: 
it will be displayed first name first, as you wanted :-)

Comment 9

[Mitar]

Hm. But I want to see last name first in the Mac OS X Address Book. Not just to sort by it. (It is really unintuitive for me to have sort order different then what you see as first letters. I tried it and I was confused where is something.)

My main point is that configuration of how Thunderbird displays something should be done in the Thunderbird and not be depended on some other application. It is really strange to have Thunderbird behave differently based on a configuration option in some other program. I agree that this could be seen as a nice user-friendly feature, but it should also be possible to override it.

Comment 10

[David von Oheimb]

Now I got your point. I agree that when Tb fills in the DisplayName field on importing Address Book contents from Mac OS, it should not take over the order used in that Address Book, but respect mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Dossy or Fred, can you reproduce this?

Comment 12

[:Dossy Shiobara]

Wayne, I can't seem to reproduce this.  On TB 31.6.0 (UA: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.6.0), it behaves as I would expect and as the OP seems to desire: changing the mail.addr_book.lastnamefirst int from 0 to 1 changes the way the "Name" column in the Address Book is both formatted and sorted in the "Mac OS X Address Book".

Comment 13

[Mitar]

In meantime I started using first name first in Address Book and sorting by last name, as was suggested above. So now I got used to that. :-) So I do not mind about this anymore.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I am confused as to why Mitar sees this, but Dossy does not.