Re: [Evolution] HELP/new explanation for Sylvia

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

> The primary difficulty I am experiencing is that Evo is sorting
> two different ways, depending upon where the Address Book is viewed.
> When I am in the main Contacts (Contact adding and editing) area,
> the Contact entries are sorted as they have been requested to be
> sorted - last name first. But when I access the second instance,
> the pop-up that responds to the "TO:" in the "EDIT" (email composing)
> mode, that window is ignoring the instruction, and displaying the
> Contacts sorted on "Full Name", rather than on the "File Under" field.

It looks like the address selection popup extracts just the email
addresses from the address book and then sorts them in a fairly
simplistic manner (probably leaving the widget to do the sorting) - if
it doesn't extract the sort order, it can't sort them in that order.
Sure, it probably should be sorting them in what you think is the
correct order, but it may need some comprehensive re-writing of that bit
of code to extract two fields and then sort them and then display a
different field to what is sorted on.  But I'm just surmising, I haven't
looked at the code.

> The reason I am finding the lack of responses to this query so puzzling
> is very simple: it seems that either nobody else has experienced
> this, or that they have, and have ignored it. Does it not seem quite
> unlikely that, if this is a bug in 2.28.1, nobody else would have
> noticed it? Is it possible that people would actually put up with
> having their Contacts incorrectly sorted every time they need to
> retrieve one when composing an email?

Perhaps it just hasn't bothered anyone before - personally I haven't
ever used the address selection popup - I either reply to emails or type
the address in directly, using autocomplete when necessary.



> Then as a related part of this, there are Contacts which appear in the
> latter list but never show up in the main Contacts editing list.
> That is also unacceptable; if for no other reason than those Contacts
> which do not show on the main Contacts editing screen are therefore
> no available for editing.

They aren't "contacts" as such they are email addresses extracted from
your contacts.  Perhaps you have extra email addresses in some of your
contacts that are being listed there as well.

> I really have to believe these conditions are both bugs, but I have
> invested a lot of time in searching forum posts and bug lists, and have
> yet to find either one. On the other hand , if they *are* bugs, why
> is it that nobody else has noticed them?

If all this bothers you, and no one as reported it before, then file a
bug ... and congratulate yourself that you have found an issue that no
one else has spotted before :-)  That is after all how FOSS works.  And
remember that what to you is a show stopper crass obvious bug, may well
be an edge case to other people.

> I don't like mysteries. If I want mystery, I'll read Agatha Christie.
> I don't need it in my email programs :-)
If you don't want it to be a mystery, then read the source and see what
has actually been programmed - it's FOSS, so nothing is either a mystery
or a secret.

P.