Does anyone else here find that Linux applications' idea of how names should be presented in address lists etc. seems to be wrong, or at least not ideal?
Having decided that I don't want to live with Evolution's quirks I took a look at Thunderbird, a well sorted mainstream application if there was one surely.
But it *too* decides that the "Screen Name" for entries in the address list is presented as first name followed by surname. Thus, more importantly than the presentation, the names are *sorted* by first name which is decidedly not the way I expect to look names up in an address list.
Am I missing some obvious configuration option that sorts names in surname order?
This has happened in several different Linux apps when synchronizing data from my PDA whereas when I synchronized with Outlook (spit) I got exactly what I expected, names sorted by surname. It's this sort of thing that puts people of Linux a bit.
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 05:52:23PM +0000, Chris G wrote:
Does anyone else here find that Linux applications' idea of how names should be presented in address lists etc. seems to be wrong, or at least not ideal?
Having decided that I don't want to live with Evolution's quirks I took a look at Thunderbird, a well sorted mainstream application if there was one surely.
But it *too* decides that the "Screen Name" for entries in the address list is presented as first name followed by surname. Thus, more importantly than the presentation, the names are *sorted* by first name which is decidedly not the way I expect to look names up in an address list.
Am I missing some obvious configuration option that sorts names in surname order?
View -> Show Name As -> Last, First
?
Or set mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst to true (but I couldn't see an easy way to do that other than the hardcore config editor).
This has happened in several different Linux apps when synchronizing data from my PDA whereas when I synchronized with Outlook (spit) I got exactly what I expected, names sorted by surname. It's this sort of thing that puts people of Linux a bit.
Funny, the first time I had to deal with last name, first name I thought "How formal. I tend to think of most of my contacts by their first names".
J.
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 06:03:46PM +0000, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 05:52:23PM +0000, Chris G wrote:
Does anyone else here find that Linux applications' idea of how names should be presented in address lists etc. seems to be wrong, or at least not ideal?
Having decided that I don't want to live with Evolution's quirks I took a look at Thunderbird, a well sorted mainstream application if there was one surely.
But it *too* decides that the "Screen Name" for entries in the address list is presented as first name followed by surname. Thus, more importantly than the presentation, the names are *sorted* by first name which is decidedly not the way I expect to look names up in an address list.
Am I missing some obvious configuration option that sorts names in surname order?
View -> Show Name As -> Last, First
I am (was) missing something obvious! Thank you.
?
Or set mail.addr_book.displayName.lastnamefirst to true (but I couldn't see an easy way to do that other than the hardcore config editor).
This has happened in several different Linux apps when synchronizing data from my PDA whereas when I synchronized with Outlook (spit) I got exactly what I expected, names sorted by surname. It's this sort of thing that puts people of Linux a bit.
Funny, the first time I had to deal with last name, first name I thought "How formal. I tend to think of most of my contacts by their first names".
So do I, but I don't expect to look them up that way. How many phone books (for example) sort the names by first name? In addition it's often quite useful to see all the members of one family together.
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Chris G -
Jonathan McDowell