GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 272391
Autocompletion should show email addr if two email addrs with same name
Last modified: 2008-09-23 11:03:21 UTC
I noticed a recent change to autocompletion causes only the name of the recipient to be displayed after autocompletion. This is much more in line with what Outlook does. However, Outlook's habit of hiding email addresses at all costs (and using names instead) is a serious problem. These days most people have multiple email addresses, which can all be in the address book under the same name. I frequently have problems receiving email at my home address that people intended to send to my work address, or vice versa, because everyone I know uses Outlook, and it goes out of its way to not tell you what the address of the person you're mailing is (unless you right-click and go "Properties", although most people don't know that, or don't want to bother). Thus they choose the first instance of the intended name that pops up in their list. Or, more worryingly, they somehow figured out (and try to remember) that "the second Joe Bloggs in the list is his home email account, the first one is his work account, and the one that says Joe J. Bloggs is his gmail account". I think hiding email addresses is fine if it's an option, or if addresses are not hidden when there is more than one address mapping to the same name in the addressbook. Personally, I would like to disable the hiding of email addresses entirely (even after autocompletion when a full name is available), but I know not everyone wants to see email addresses, so perhaps an option is the best idea? (I looked for an option, and couldn't find one anywhere.) Thanks!
you are talking about not showing email in the autocomplete pop down window ? It is no longer the case. We show now both email and name. After selecting entry we show only the name.If this is not waht you meant please reopen.
*** bug 270843 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Is this a change that was made between 2.1.5 and 2.1.6? It's not quite what I meant. I have 2.1.5 and it shows all email addresses in the drop-down list, as you describe (if I'm reading it right). The problem is that the email address is not shown in the "To:" line. If you type a name, e.g. "Luke", it autocompletes to "Luke Hutchison", then shows all email addresses for Luke Hutchison. However, if you have 4 email addresses for that name, it doesn't show you which of these is the actual one that was autocompleted. So you have to go down and choose the one you want anyway, because you don't know where you're sending the message to. This renders autocompletion useless. The change I was requesting was to have the email address always shown in the "To:"/"CC:"/etc. line, if there are two names in the address book that are the same but have different email addresses. Unfortunately that won't always work if the two name representations are almost, but not exactly, the same (e.g. one has a middle initial). An even better solution, just always show the email address next to the name, in angle brackets ("Luke Hutchison <luke@domain.com>"). As far as I remember this is much more in line with what Evo 1.2 did. Hiding the email address is not a useful thing. As I mentioned, outlook does it, and I get email all the time to the wrong account because several people I deal with have two addresses for me under the same name. You can't lose showing email addresses, but you can if you hide them. I don't think this is a case of "needing to simplify the interface for the general public" -- even the general public has to deal with actual email addresses, and will always have to. Please see Luis Villa's comment in the dup. I think he's referring to the same thing I am. Thanks!
Sorry, I mean Luis' comment in the dup of the dup :) bug 271215.
*** Bug 274376 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 252165 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 229384 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
We need to show name and e-mail address, but if it is a problem as we have a single text filed, if showing the long string per address causes the problem (see 231751), then we need to show which address is selected while autocompletion by marking the selected email address in the right click menu, and also showing the name and address on mouse pointer focus.
Also we need to see if we can exclude some ids form the autocompleted contact list. See 220570.
Re. Comment 8: Yes, but you also need to always show the email address if the name is not a unique identifier of the email address. i.e. if there is one or more other email addresses corresponding to the display name that is shown for an address in the field, then the email address should always be shown. This stops people sending email to a co-worker's home address rather than their work address, etc.
well, name *and* mail address are shown it the dropdown menu in 2.4.0, is that ok? (seems that i don't get the bug at all, sigh)
The point is you shouldn't have to right-click on every email address in the list to make sure you're sending the email where you think you're sending it. A partial solution is to append the email location designation to the end of the email address if the contact has more than one email address, e.g. "John Smith (Home)", "John Smith (Work)" etc. A better solution is to simply display the name and the email address together if there is more than one email address across all addressbooks for the given name.
It would be ideal to have this configurable - either short display (comment #12) or full display. Even in drop down menu of 2.4.0 it is not OK. If recipient has more e-mail addresses, you see all these addresses in the drop-down menu, but you have no evidence, which of these addresses is actually used in the mail. I guess it is known as bug 274376.
ok, so retargetting this to 2.5 since it is not fixed in 2.4.0.
removing old target milestone.
Created attachment 117444 [details] [review] proposed eds patch for evolution-data-server; The emails are shown in case the contact contains more than one email, or user forces to show them in bool option /apps/evolution/addressbook/completion/show_address Even if forced, no emails are shown for contact lists.
Created attachment 117455 [details] [review] proposed evo patch for evolution; UI part with new strings, scheme entry and quite big UI change for Edit->Preferences->Autocompletion. This patch is not necessary to let the eds part work, thus I think we can commit the eds patch even to actual trunk before this one.
Created attachment 117456 [details] screen shot of new UI
*** Bug 501289 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Milan, it seems fine for me. But UI freeze. So commit after freeze. (I haven't tested it, but seems fine for me.). Just another thought, can we avoid the need for an UI. Any alternate way of showing the email? Currently, when you r-click on the contact, the email is shown. Can we think of tooltips or something like that, which can be more intuitive.. just a thought.
(In reply to comment #21) > Milan, it seems fine for me. But UI freeze. So commit after freeze. (I haven't > tested it, but seems fine for me.). What about committing at least eds part? There is no UI change there, but quite good functionality change, which someone can prefer. > Just another thought, can we avoid the need for an UI. Any alternate way of > showing the email? Currently, when you r-click on the contact, the email is > shown. Can we think of tooltips or something like that, which can be more > intuitive.. just a thought. Tooltips. Hmm. I do not like them much. The widget has a tooltip already, showing all addresses in there (for cases that there are too many addresses and you want to see all of them).
Following discussions on IRC, the e-d-s patch was committed to trunk as r9460 http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/evolution-data-server?view=revision&revision=9460
evo part committed to trunk. Committed revision 36431.