On Mon, 2010-08-30 at 07:16 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote: > There is no need to mangle subjects like "Re: [Evolution] Need help with > Contacts/Adam" or address specific people in response; threading of the > messages will do that for you/us.
Brewster replies: I've always been under the impression that not everyone's email client structure allows them to properly thread, so the name flag presumably can be of help to some. Maybe that is no longer the case, though with the proliferation of people using web-based email, I am not convinced :-) > On Sun, 2010-08-29 at 19:07 -0700, Brewster Gillett wrote: > > bg: > > > > 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 :-) adam: > > > Yes, representing anything other than contacts is problematic. This > > > isn't entirely Evolution's fault; the vCard spec provides no way to > > > represent anything other than a Contact. > > You're confusing me here, Adam - the "lists" I refer to are a standard > > part of the Evo Contacts module, according to the documentation - > > there should be no reason I cannot file 12 names and email addresses > > under one Contact and thereby create a Contact List. adam: > There isn't a reason you can't; but it does make the interface odd. bg: Can you elaborate on that last part? It isn't clear to me at all. adam: > And if you are syncing the addressbook with a server the results are > undefined. bg: I do no synching. My needs are comparatively simple, confined largely to my home office - I no longer have complex outside IT relationships. Again, in describing the Contact List needs I perceive that I have; I am a board member for three separate organizations. There are times when I may need to *originate* an email message to go to, say, 12 people. Surely you aren't suggesting that I should construct a list from scratch each time this need arises? What else would fulfill my need to automate that process, other than the Contacts List function? I'm always open to alternate solutions. But the one I don't consider a viable alternative is to manually select and create a list each time :-) <snip> adam: > > > Can you search for your contacts? bg: > > I'm unclear on exactly what you mean by that term in this context. adam: > There is a "search" field in the dialog that appears. If the left pane > of the dialog does not list all your contacts when the dialog initially > opens can you search for the absent ones? bg: Ahhh - I see that now. I'd simply never had occasion to use it, since my method is to just scroll through the list provided by the popup until I get the one I want, and select it. I tried the search list, with interesting results. Those Contacts which are not appearing in the popup list will not return for a search, no matter how I enter their names or addresses. What that tells me is that the search, in this spot, is confined to only those that are already listed in the popup - in other words, it is not able to search the full list of Contacts on file - only those contained in the popup. I would be inclined to label that an oversight on the part of the developers. Why not search the entire Contacts list? I have invested a good deal of time, involving lots of unavoidable handwriting of lists, (apparently when running under Ubuntu, Evo will not honor a print request of the Contacts list unless you are running as superuser, which means I would have to quit Evo, then reinvoke it from the command line preceded by that damned "sudo" - I'm accustomed since the early Eighties at AT&T to being able to just log in as SU<g>) and have turned up some intriguing results. I looked at the full list, which was at 68 entries, and decided several Contacts could be pared. So I deleted sufficient Contacts to bring the list total down to 63. Now, before these deletions, I had eight Contacts which did not appear in the popup, which sort of confirmed that the popup can only hold 60. Then I deleted five Contacts - so now my total is 63. However - I am *still* not seeing the same eight Contacts in the popup, and the popup count now sits at 55. As Flip Wilson as Geraldine said in that soda pop commercial some years ago, "You a total stranger, and the total don't add up!". Maybe I will eventually have to conclude there are some bugs in all of this, and submit a report. I have about reached the unavoidable conclusion that the system's refusal to sort the popup by the "File under:" can only be a bug - surely nobody could have intended that it operate in that fashion. Sorry to ramble on so. One of these times I'll probably ramble even more, and attempt to explain why it is that for my particular patterns of use of email, the popup list of Contacts makes the most sense of any of the composition options offered. Brewster -- *********************************************************************** Embrace a sharing community of sustainable justice low-carbon diversity *********************************************************************** W. Brewster Gillett [email protected] Portland, OR USA *********************************************************************** Simply because you don't like to hear it, that doesn't make it untrue. *********************************************************************** _______________________________________________ evolution-list mailing list [email protected] To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list
