Re: [Evolution-hackers] Handle Spanish names and surnames properly

[David Marín Carreño <dmarin dyr es>]

On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 18:05 -0400, Aaron Weber wrote:
> David: 
> 
> To handle multi-word last names, enter "Marin Carreño, David" in the
> "File Under" text box.
> 

Do you mean "File as" text box?

In that case, I must enter all Spanish names twice (first in "Full name"
text box, and then in "File as" textbox) while entering new contacts.

That is the workaround I have been using for two years, but... that
doesn't solve the problem: I need a truly i18n'ed addressbook! ;-)

The only thing I must say is that Outlook, in Spanish, splits well our
names, or, at least, let us to select the correct division among some
possible usual divisions.

I'd like an similar behaviour in Evolution in Spanish. :-)

> You can of course use a hyphen to turn them into a single word, but I
> know that's kind of cheating and kind of robbing people of their
> names, so that's not acceptable either technically or culturally.
> 
> a.
> 
> On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 23:29 +0200, David Marín Carreño wrote: 
> > Hi all.
> > 
> > After two years, a bug submitted by me (#2982) continues in the Ximian
> > bugzilla waiting for a bit of love...
> > 
> > The bug is related with the way Evolution splits the whole name into
> > parts (prefix, name, surname, middlename, suffix...). Also, it's related
> > to bug #37297.
> > 
> > I don't know if this division works perfectly for English names, but it
> > doesn't with Spanish names, because of two main problems:
> > 
> > * Here, in Spain, we often use our two surnames. For example, my own
> > complete name: David Marin Carreño -> Name: David, Surname: Marín
> > Carreño.
> > 
> > Now, Evolution thinks that my first surname is my middle name, and
> > indexes my name with my second surname (which is pretty annoying...)
> > 
> > * Other people, in commercial activities, only uses their first surname,
> > but they have a compound first name, that shouldn't be divided into
> > First + Middle names. 
> > For example: Francisco Javier López -> Name: Francisco Javier, Surname:
> > López.
> > 
> > Evolution now saves this name as "Francisco López", which is
> > particularly wrong if we know that "Francisco Javier" is usually called
> > "Javier", and not "Francisco"...
> > 
> > 
> > Someone could say that this situation can be solutioned using the "Full
> > Name" button... But this is bad when I want to quickly introduce new
> > Spanish contacts into my addressbook... I don't want to press "Full
> > name" button for make my Spanish contacts to get indexed well.
> > 
> > 
> > After seeking the related module, I've found that the bug is related
> > with the evolution-data-server/addressbook/libebook/e-name-western.c
> > module, and its extremely rigid way for parsing names.
> > 
> > According to this module, a given name-string is automatically divided
> > into prefix, first, middle, nick, last and suffix. And this division
> > doesn't depend on anything else.
> > 
> > I think this is a problem, and there should be a way for changing the
> > behaviour of e_name_western_parse function, and making it to depend on
> > some settings, such as the current locale or a given configuration
> > string extracted from a combo box, or a selection box
> > 
> > For example, for English names, the configuration string could be:
> > 
> > PARSE_STRING = "[PREFIX] FIRST [MIDDLE] LAST [SUFFIX]"
> > with PREFIX = "Mr.", "Miss", "Mrs.", "Ms.", "Dr"
> > and SUFFIX = "Jr", "Sr"
> > 
> > and always indexing with LAST and FIRST.
> > 
> > But, for Spanish names, this configuration string could be:
> > 
> > PARSE_STRING = "[PREFIX] FIRST LAST+"
> > or "[PREFIX] FIRST+ LAST"
> > 
> > That is, a given string "Word1 Word2 Word3" could be parsed as: 
> > Name: Word1, Surname: Word2 Word3 
> > or
> > Name: Word1 Word2, Surname: Word3 
> > 
> > The user should be able to change among the different parsing rules when
> > adding the contact into the addressbook, in both new-contact and
> > quick-new-contact dialogs.
> > 
> > What do you think about this solution?
> > 
> > 
> > I'm offering help and time to program this question in my weekends, but
> > I need some help for knowing which other modules should be changed.
> > 
> > 
> > Greetings
> > 
> > -- 
> > David Marín Carreño <dmarin dyr es>
> > Desarrollo y Recursos, S.L.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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