Re: [Evolution] semicolons versus commas

[Nick Jenkins <nickpj gmail com>]

> > > Exchange delimits email address in the To: field with semicolons
> > > instead of commas.  Since Evo. is set to look for commas, the result
> > > is that if an email is sent to more than one person, the other
> > > addresses do not appear in the header of the message in Evo.
> > >
> > >  Is there any way to get Evo. to look for the
> > > semicolons?
> >
> > I have no solution for you, but it has been logged as a request at:
> > https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=558037
> > "Evolution: Accept semicolons, as well as commas, as email-address
> > separators in the "TO" address field."
>
> I'm connected with Evo as well to an Exchange (2003) server. But, I see
> commas as separators. May be this can be somehow configured (wrong) in
> the server itself?

Semicolons as separators (as well as commas, if I recall correctly)
worked in Outlook 2000 connected to POP3 and IMAP servers (with no MS
servers or Exchange involved). That makes me suspect that it's a
function of the client, not the server.

> > > This is based on the Mailstandard (RfC2822, Section 3.6.3) which
> > > specifies commas and not semicolons, a standard which Microsoft
> > > apparently ignores.

Just on this: whilst I agree with the whole obeying RFCs philosophy,
there are effectively two distinct and separate aspects here:
1) The client UI in which the user types/enters their list of recipients
(e.g. "blah blah com, test test com" using commas, or "blah blah com;
test test com" using semicolons)
2) What Evo does when talking to a server (i.e. the client/server
network interaction).

RFCs are perfect for 2), and no disagreement whatsoever that obeying
RFCs whilst talking to the server is "a good thing".

However 1) is about a user-interface, and I'm not aware of any RFC that
attempts to dictate the behaviour of a desktop app's user-interface, and
frankly any attempt to do so seems doomed to failure.

If some reasonable subset of potential users expects and has become
habituated to using semicolons as a delimiter in the UI, then perhaps
Evo should support it, thus making it a more attractive client to those
users & decreasing effort to switch clients, whilst still obeying RFCs
on the wire.

So, to me, the RFC counterargument is a red-herring, which misses the
separation between UI behaviour and network behaviour.

-- All the best,
Nick.