Paul, my votes on your potential problems with the script follow:
On or near 1/28/2001 12:51 AM, Paul Berkowitz at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
observed:
> On 1/27/01 11:08 PM, I wrote:
>
>> OK. Here it is. You can drag contacts and/or groups (any combination) from
>> custom view(s) and/or the Address Book to any or all of the recipient fields
>> (To, Cc, Bcc) of a new message window. Then run the script to remove
>> duplicates. It will show all contacts as contact icons, except for contacts
>> without display names (i.e. only email addresses): they will be included but
>> will display the email address with an @ icon. If you have dragged a group,
>> it will show all non-duplicate individual group members now, not the group
>> name. If the group members are contacts, it will show them as contact icons
>> (except nameless ones, as above). If you have any group members who are not
>> real contacts in the Address Book, they will be included, if not duplicates,
>> with the @ icon. Please let me know if you hit any problem.
>
> Here's a possible problem or two:
>
> 1) If you purposely have "quasi-duplicate" contacts: same display name with
> different email address, the script will consistently put one of those in
> the message, never the other. Even if it's NOT duplicated, but just comes
> once, it will be switched to the other version. This is not a situation
> that many people will have, but some will.
>
> 2) If you have purposely put a contact into a group as a group member with a
> NON-default address (so it displays with the @ sign, not a contact icon), it
> will be replaced by the contact icon with the default address.
>
Frankly I don't like either of these. As I said when the script was first
suggested, I frequently <need> the ability to include the same contact
display name with two different addresses because the person has requested
that messages be sent to both addresses, e.g., work and home. Also, if I
have addressed a message to a non-default address, I think it is evident
that I want that address used, not the default, so I would not want a script
that overrides my preferences.
>
> I could fix either or both of these by one of two ways:
>
> A) Forget about contact icons. If I replace them by the @ icon version
> instead of the little-man contact icon for ALL contacts, those problems will
> never arise. Or if I replace it just for group entries, problem 2 above will
> never arise.
>
I vote for forgetting the contact icons. It's a cosmetic nicety versus a
functional flaw.
> B) I could check every contact and group entry to see if the email address
> used is the default. If it is, then you get the contact icon. If it isn't,
> then you get the right address with the @ sign. The problem with this method
> is that it will be slower, because it will involve an extra AppleEvent for
> each contact. You'll have seen that the present script is super-fast. With
> only 10 or 20 contacts you probably wouldn't notice the difference, but with
> 100 I'm pretty sure you would. I can check tomorrow.
>
This would be a solution that gives the best of both worlds. I suppose that,
if it isn't too slow, it would be a good one. I do not envision many cases
where, in my own use, I would notice the difference. When I send to over
fifty people I use a different approach entirely, my "bulk mail" script,
where the duplicates get eliminated by the FileMaker routines I use that
generate the tab-delimited mailing list that I input to the script. Other
folks, however, may find the slowness oppressive if they run into it a lot.
Your call. But if the difference seems minimal, I'd vote for this approach.
> So the potential problem exists only because i wanted to use the contact
> icon. One solution (A) would ditch that in favor of 100% accuracy either in
> all cases or just for groups, and the other method (B) would get both looks
> (the contact icon in most cases) and the 100% accuracy (@ icons for the few
> others) at the expense of speed. Which of the four methods is preferable
> (including the present one)?
>
>
--
Peace,
Allen Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> XNS name: =Allen Watson
A Mac family since 1984 <http://home.earthlink.net/~allenwatson/>
Applescripts for Outlook Express and Entourage:
<http://homepage.mac.com/allenwatson/>
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