On Sun, 2010-08-29 at 07:50 -0700, Brewster Gillett wrote:
> Using Evo 2.28.3 and Ubuntu 10.04.
> I am beginning to wonder if any of our senior experts on this list have
> ever used Evolution's Contacts module. Perhaps address books went out of
> fashion when I wasn't looking, and Autocomplete is the flavor of the
> month now. There are some inexplicable things going on in the Contacts
> section, and have been for a long time, but we rarely see it mentioned.

No, I use it.  It certainly seems to have gone out-of-fashion for some
[I've noticed that too], but I have no idea what they are using in its
place.

> At present I have 70 Contacts filed. All but three are individuals.
> Problems with the three that are "lists" were introduced in an earlier
> email message, and have not yet been resolved. Another topic :-)

Yes, representing anything other that contacts is problematic.  This
isn't entirely Evolution's fault;  the vCard spec provides no way to
represent anything other than a Contact.

> When I initiate a "NEW" email message, and follow the instructions
> in the Evo Help, as reproduced here,
> "Alternately, you can click the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: buttons to get a list
> of the email addresses in your contacts. Select addresses and click the
> arrows to move them into the appropriate address columns."

Yep.

> then I get the popup window listing my Contacts. Unfortunately, it has
> *two* significant discrepancies. First, it only lists 60 of my
> 70 contacts. I have examined each one of the contacts that are being
> omitted, and the few checked or populated boxes in them do not differ
> in any discernible fashion from any of the ones that *are* being listed.
> "Personal" is the only mailbox choice in use on any of them.
> "Any" is the chosen category for all.
> Three elements are the maximum (and minimum) number used in all 70
> Contacts:
> Full Name
> File under
> email address
> So the only conclusion I can reach is that the popup maybe is limited
> to 60 entries - can that possibly be true?

Could be.  I'd say that the default behavior is broken anyway - listing
ANY contacts by default is incorrect.  Can you search for your contacts?
[What if you have thousands of contacts, do you expect them all to be
listed?  Either (a) the program will try and probably crash or hang or
(b) only a subset will be listed and the user will be confused.
Conclusion: list none]

> The other problem, and I have posted it here at least twice with no
> responses, is that the system appears to be completely ignoring,
> in all cases, the sorting according to the "File under" field 
> in the Contact entries. What it is sorting by is the *first name*
> of the Contact. Let me make this one very clear; when I actually
> move into the Contacts module, as in to do editing of Contacts,
> all the Contacts appear sorted by the "File under" field, as they
> are expected to be. It is only in the "SELECT CONTACTS" popup
> that appears when you are composing a new message and smack the
> "To:" field that they are being incorrectly sorted on first name
> from the "Full Name" field.

Hmm.  I've give that a try.

> BTW though I shouldn't have to, I will add that every single one of the
> entries in my Contacts *does* have the "File under" field populated. 

Can you even save a contact without that field filled in?

> What really mystifies me is the apparent fact that I am the only user 
> who has noticed these two things, so far.
> Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can look for
> to fix these problems? It's always possible that they could be the
> result of something I am doing, or failing to do, though I can't see
> how. Or are they bugs?
> Or should I just shut up, forget about the popup and its sorting and
> omission issues, and rely completely on the Autocomplete feature?
-- 
Adam Tauno Williams <[email protected]> LPIC-1, Novell CLA
<http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com>
OpenGroupware, Cyrus IMAPd, Postfix, OpenLDAP, Samba

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