Re: [Evolution] Automatic contacts

[George Reeke <reeke mail rockefeller edu>]

On Tue, 2017-09-12 at 15:13 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > > > > i'm trying to find a setting for this: when type the name of my
> > > > > mailcontact in to: field, i have to type 3 letters. I wnat to
> > > > > change
> > > > > it to 2 letters. In Editor-> Settings i found nothing?!
> > > > > someone has an hint?
> > Why wouldn't you want it to be the smallest number of letters that
> > gives a unique match--one letter if you only have one name starting
> > with that letter, etc.?
>
> To know if it produces a unique match requires a look-up . . . the
> reason for minimal length [3 in almost every client] is do the expense
> of a look-up to a large addressbook.  Addressbooks with over a thousand
> entries are common.  Corporate addressbooks can be much larger than
> that.

Really?  How do I do a 3-letter lookup?  Maybe with an index with
26*26*26 entries followed by linear search?  Binary search?  Hash
table with every entry in it?  All of these are easily extended,
if you like from "batch" to "online" coding techniques, where you
keeping adding letters until you can stop.  And without a great
deal of study, it seems to me that upkeep as the list changes
would not be all that much harder with any of these.  How does
the 3-letter method work when there are ten Joneses in the list?
Isn't it the same thing, just starting a little farther in?
> And do user's really not know THREE characters in the name/address of
> who they want to send a message to?  Shortening the search criteria is
> addressing a problem that doesn't exist.

I thought the purpose was to cut down unnecessary typing.  Not a
"problem" maybe, but sure a convenience.

George Reeke