[MlMt] How to edit recipients

[Randall Gellens]

--Randall

On 5 Mar 2018, at 8:17, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> 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 think if the modified name was the result of a user-set regex, and 
showed in the composition window for replies, then perhaps a way to 
visually indicate in the composition window that the name was modified 
with a way to revert, would be more than sufficient.

>
>>> 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.)

It’s not just the column display in the mailbox, but also the message 
display when viewing a message.  But, yes, if that can be modified, that 
would be helpful.