[MlMt] How to edit recipients

[Benny Kjær Nielsen]

On 5 Mar 2018, at 5:25, Randall Gellens wrote:

>>>> 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.
>
> No, the user can ignore it, because it likely won’t be any worse 
> than doing nothing.

If MailMate reorders something wrongly and then puts that in an outgoing 
message then I think it's worse than doing nothing. But again, if we are 
only talking about how MailMate displays names then it's not a problem. 
Only the user of MailMate is affected when/if it fails.

>>> 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.
>
> Yes, exactly, although Eudora also used the modified form when sending 
> replies, which was nice.

I wouldn't be comfortable with that unless the user has verified it, 
e.g., by adding the correspondent to the address book (Contacts).

>> 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.
>
> I wonder if an option to have a regex for name alteration might be a 
> workable approach?  Leave it to the user to devise a good regex.

That's kind of how it already works. It's low-level though, both how to 
redefine a message list column and how to change the regex for finding 
first/last name. Would you like me to describe how this is done? (You 
might prefer to just hope that it'll be easier to customize some day.)

-- 
Benny