Re: [Evolution] Full name parsing

[Eric Lambart <lambart got net>]

Well, FWIW: in America at least, if we use a comma, it always implies
that the last name comes first.  Just like the default "File As" field
(I wish that were configurable) shows Last Name, First Name.

--Eric

On Wed, 2001-09-26 at 05:54, Pascal DeMilly wrote:
> I agree with you. But what about a rule that will help the parser in
> deciding what is what. We could use the comma as a separator when in add
> mode. So for example:
>
> John & Jane, Doe will parse correctly. The comma could be removed
> automatically by Evolution once the parsing is done. Obviously this rule
> should only apply to full name not company name.
>
> Therefore the rule will be as follow. Start by the end and find the 1st
> comma. If there is none, apply existing rule. If there is one, we have a
> last name. Then continue to the next comma, If we have none apply
> existing rule. If we have one, we have a middle name. The rest if the
> first name.
>
> Therefore I should have inputed "John & Jane,, Doe" to be parsed
> correctly. Evolution will remove the commas, and print it as "John &
> Jane Doe".
>
> Could that be implemented ?
>
> Pascal
>
> On Mon, 2001-09-24 at 22:08, Jon Trowbridge wrote:
> > On Mon, 2001-09-24 at 20:38, Pascal DeMilly wrote:
> > > When parsing a full name, I think Evolution should have a rule that know
> > > how to parse John & Jane Doe correctly. I propose that John & Jane
> > > should be firstname and Doe should be a lastname. Right now, John is a
> > > firstname, "&" is a middle name and Jane Doe is the lastname. 
> > >
> > > What do you think ?
> >
> > I agree in principle, but trying to construct parsing rules that work
> > really well in a lot of unusual cases like this is really hard.  For
> > example, I've seen e-mail addresses like "Joe Smith & Family" and "John
> > Doe & Jane Roe".  Doing the right thing with &-separated names in all
> > (or even most) cases is a hard and murky problem.  And this is just one
> > of an essentially infinite number of obscure cases.  And to make things
> > even more complicated, the '&' character might have totally different
> > semantics in other languages, causing problems for all of our
> > non-English-using friends.
> >
> > Not that trying to transparently doing the right isn't an important and
> > worthy goal.  It is just much trickier than it usually looks.
> >
> > In the short term, I'd recommend using the contact editor to 'manually'
> > parse unsual constructions like 'John & Jane Doe'.  As you probably
> > already know, clicking on the "Full Name" button when editing a contact
> > lets you specify how the name should be broken into first/middle/last
> > parts.
> >
> > -JT
>
>
>
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