64662 - Recipient autocomplete results should be sorted (alphabetically?)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

This problem has been originaly reported in bug 42458, here is the diferrent
comments about it:


------- Additional Comments From Matthew Thomas (mpt) 2000-07-06 10:04 -------

Maybe you should list options which match the whole string first, and options
which match only one of the words (e.g. `Kit Fr' to match `Christopher Francis')
after that? Or maybe list options which match any of the words only if there are
no matches which match the whole string.


------- Additional Comments From Phil Peterson 2000-07-06 10:25 -------

Personally, I wouldn't want either of those options. I want an alphabetical list
of hits matching the pattern (kim* br*).

A segmented list of matches would be confusing to me (non-sorted would look like
a bug) and deciding to show some matches but not others defeats the purpose of
the autocomplete picker (which is to unambiguously choose the right recipient
based on all possible matches)

------- Additional Comments From [e-mail] 2001-01-04 13:38 -------

Ok, I have implemented the whole logic I'have described earlier.

Now I am looking at sorting the result but I don't know on which criteria to do
it? matches are shown as:
 [firstName] [lastName] <[email address]>

any preference for the sort?


------- Additional Comments From [e-mail] 2001-01-04 18:58 -------

it's hard to tell until I use it, but I think I like the idea of it being sorted
by the first name.  Only because normally when I autocomplete, I start typing
the first name and so that's how I'd be looking for it in the list.


------- Additional Comments From Matthew Thomas (mpt) 2001-01-05 05:19 -------

Sorting by last name would only make sense in those cultures where the surname is
the last name (e.g. the US and most European cultures). Sorting by first name
would make sense everywhere (because it's obvious alphabetical order, same as for
the other uses of auto-complete in Mozilla).

No it should not be a pref. (Just in case anyone suggests that.)

Comment 1

[scottputterman]

marking nsbeta1+ and moving to mozilla0.8

Comment 2

[scottputterman]

movign to mozilla0.9

Comment 3

[Peter Lairo]

The list should be sorted by the most recently used first. This is the desirable
solution since most people tend to send mail to the same people frequently. 

As an alternative, the list should be sorted by "Display Name".

Comment 4

[scottputterman]

marking nsbeta1- and moving to future milestone.

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 67055, Autocompletion List for Recipients should be sorted by most 
frequently used.

By the way, bug 78270 is a similar (but much longer) discussion of how 
autocomplete results in the browser's URL bar should be sorted.

Comment 6

[Ben Clewett]

The sorting should be firstly done on the last option selected.  

Please note that in normal work, a person will not have many contacts matching,
say, four letters.  I am very board of entering a four letter name (like 'alex')
and contantly being given an option of the wrong email address.  Can't it
remeber from last time which one I want?

If this is not to everybodies liking, then can it be an option?

Comment 7

[Max Waterman]

I am seeing a problem with the order the autocomplete addresses are presented.

I want it to prefer an LDAP entry over any other. I would like to be able to
assign a number to each source of addresses and have it list them in that order.

eg

LDAP server ldap.local.domain.com #1
LDAP server ldap.domain.com #2
PersonalAddressBook #3
CollectedAddresses #4

or something...you get the idea.

I do like the idea of an option to remember which source was selected last time
for a particular address, but perhaps that would be a bit of a nightmare to
implement.

Max.

Comment 8

[rapidfire]

just make the whole thing alphabetical on request AND in addition to that if you want, to show the last most recent you want like the last 10 if so you specify. If only the dumb search engines all over the net worked in similarly intelligent ways. But I won't go into that here.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

should this be close wontfix, since bug 276632 made the default "most popular first" and demand for this is near zero?

Comment 10

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

yep, I don't think there's a need for this.  hopefully extensions can alter this to allow people to gain this kind of control if they want it.