[MlMt] How to edit recipients

[Benny Kjær Nielsen]

On 27 Feb 2018, at 19:05, Randall Gellens wrote:

> On 20 Feb 2018, at 1:58, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:
>
>>> On a more esoteric note, it would be nice if MM could normalize 
>>> recipients names that are in annoying Outlook format, e.g., change
>>> 	“Bozo, Fred” <fred.bozo at example.com>
>>> To
>>> 	Fred Bozo <fred.bozo at example.com>
>>
>> MailMate cannot do this automatically. It's extremely hard 
>> (impossible?) to correctly identify the various parts of a 
>> “name”. Also, you have to assume that if your correspondent uses 
>> this format then it's probably what they prefer to see when they get 
>> a reply.
>
> I disagree with this; I think in almost all cases, the recipient’s 
> client dictates how names are formatted.  E.g., I think Outlook 
> imposes the quote-last-comma-first-quote format.

That might be true, but they can only do that if they know what the last 
name and the first name is -- which they would usually only know if the 
user has specifically added the name to an address book.

I'm a bit surprised if Outlook takes an incoming message, analyzes it's 
“From” header, and then reorder its parts to a different format. It 
still think this is very hard to get right.

>> MailMate could display the names differently (without altering them 
>> when replying/forwarding), but I really mean it when I write that 
>> it's extremely hard to do this reliably :) As as simple example, 
>> someone might use this: "PhD Nielsen, Benny" and it would become 
>> "Benny PhD Nielsen".
>
> I agree it’s likely impossible to have an algorithm that always does 
> the correct thing.  However, one that usually does the correct thing 
> is good enough.

The problem is that it would be very annoying when it fails. Then the 
user has to manually edit the header to get it right.

> As an aside, this “Outlook name conversion” was one of my favorite 
> features of Mac Eudora, because it made it much easier to read the 
> recipient lists.

Ah, displaying recipients is a different story. I was mainly thinking of 
composing messages. In this case, it would be ok if it fails some times.

I don't have time right now, but I could probably make a custom file for 
you which would replace the default “To” column with a “Last, 
First” variant.

-- 
Benny