Currently, Evolution displays the sender as whatever the remote-party client sent, even if I have carefully added that sender to my addressbook.

So if I have someone called Jane Doe, but she forgot to set her name in her mail client, I end up with omg_ponies239@hotmail.com in the "From" column in my inbox and in the "From" field when I view individual mails from her.

This would be the expected behavior if I did not actually add her to my address book. 

However, if I *do* have her in my address book, the From should be whatever name I assigned to her (if there is one). So if I named her "Jane Maria Doe", it should show up as "Jane Maria Doe" in the From column. If I just added her without setting her name, or if I did not add her at all, then just use whatever came with the mail headers.

This approach has a few advantages:

1- It behaves as most non-geek users would expect. (aka: "I renamed Bob, why does he still show up as 'Sexy Thingy <hellokitty23423@163.com>' ?!"). What's the point of naming your contacts if their names don't show up as you intended them?

2- It looks much, much cleaner. Compare "Suzie Bond" with "suzie.bond.chum@ssss.gouv.blahblah". Less characters, less visual clutter, faster visual scanning of the mail list, potentially shorter lists of people in mass mailings, etc. Well, except for people with really long names, but then that's up to me to name them to whatever I wish to see on a regular basis.

3- This is about not *having to care*, as a end-user, about the mail address. I only care about the *person* (from my list of known persons in my everyday life) who sent the message from the other end of the tube.



Now, for comic relief:

<andre> senders should set up useful defaults instead. teach them...
<nekohayo> yeah, because I definitely have to educate half the planet on naming themselves with every possible combination of mail clients ;)
<andre> here you go :)