Re: Bugs in Palm-to-Evo sync

[Bill Day <billday bellatlantic net>]

Seriously munged, indeed.  I have had the same problem.  Is this list the 
most effective way to report the problem to whoever is developing the 
evolution conduits, or is there a specific developer or project leader we 
should write to?

As an aside, thanks to Eskil Olsen and the other developers of 
gnome-pilot.  I do not get the full benefit of the program every day yet, 
but I am looking forward to the day that I do.  Palm support sometimes 
seems to rank fairly low in the Linux developer hierarchy, but for those of 
us who are non-geeky professional types (e.g. lawyers), it is an essential 
feature of the operating system.

Sincerely,

Bill Day


At 10:51 PM 10/13/2001 -0400, you wrote:
> I've seen this as well. However, I believe the ONLY way to fix this
> is not to try to convert multiple first names into a first name and
> middle name, as you propose below. The only way this will work is
> based on the following. Both directions demonstrated.
>
>
>         Palm Side       Evo Side
>         ---------       --------
>         Given Names =>  First Name
>         (nothing)   =>  Middle Name (empty)
>         Last Name   =>  Last Name
>
>         Palm Side       Evo Side
>         ---------       --------
>         Given Names <=  First Name + Middle Name
>         Last Name   <=  Last Name
>
> This, of course, demonstrates a deficiency in Evolution. Namely,
> nearly every application I've seen has discounted the idea of using
> "Middle Names" as a component of a name. Besides the fact that it is
> not always possible to determine exactly what the middle name should
> be (due to compound first names, multiple middle names, etc.), cultural
> variations make it impossible to assume that most of the people
> in the world even have names that can be talked about in such terms.
>
> The fix above should work, but has the necessary deficiency that
> if you have a name "First Middle Last" on Evolution, sync it to the palm,
> where it becomes "First Middle, Last", change it on the palm to become
> "First Foo, Last", and then sync it back to Evolution, it will become
> "First Foo, Last" (i.e. an empty middle name). This I believe is a necessary
> evil.
>
> I strongly suggest that Evolution change its name structure to eliminate
> middle names.
>
> As an aside (and a case study), consider the genealogical format GEDCOM
> (www.gedcom.com), which long ago decided that it was hopeless to assume
> that you can do anything with a name other than, perhaps, denote a
> substring of it that should be considered a "surname" (used for searching
> and sorting). (By the way, this also applies to name prefixes such as
> "Sir" or "General" and suffixes such as "II" and "Jr.").
>
> My 2 cents,
>
> james
>
> On Sat, Oct 13, 2001 at 05:34:14PM -0700, Philip Andrew wrote:
> > Hi --
> >
> > I just sync'ed to Evolution 0.15.99 using gnome-pilot, and a large
> > number of my address book records got seriously munged.  I suspect the
> > fault is on the Evo side, but I'm sending this both places just in case
> > (and as a warning?).
> >
> > Any record where the "First Name" field in my Palm contained multiple
> > tokens got messed up on the second (and subsequent) sync.  For example
> > (names changed to protect the yada-yada-yada),
> >
> >    Ewing, Bobby & Pam
> >    1 Southfork Ranch Drive
> >    Braddock, TX  75247
> >
> > (FirstName="Pam & Bobby" and LastName="Ewing") gets munged to
> >
> >    Pam Ewing, Bobby
> >    1 Southfork Ranch Drive
> >    Braddock, TX  75247
> >
> > (FirstName="Bobby" and LastName="Pam Ewing").
> >
> > Or even worse, a name like
> >
> >    Ewing, John Ross & Sue Ellen
> >
> > (FirstName="John Ross & Sue Ellen" and LastName="Ewing") gets munged to
> >
> >    & Sue Ellen Ewing, John
> >
> > (FirstName="John" and LastName="& Sue Ellen Ewing").
> >
> > Part of the problem is that one of the names is getting sucked up into
> > Evo's "Middle Name" field, and the sync'ing seems to be happening on
> > Evo's "File As" name (which defaults to "First Last" instead of "First
> > Middle Last"); but more subtle part of the problem is the parsing
> > sequence that Evo is using:  "Name1 Name2 (...) NameLast" gets stuffed
> > into the Evo record as
> >
> >    First Name: Name1
> >    Middle Name: Name2
> >    Last Name: (...) NameLast
> >
> > instead of
> >
> >    First Name: Name1
> >    Middle Name: Name2 (...)
> >    Last Name: NameLast
> >
> > (which seems more intuitive ...).  Or maybe sync'ing should happen based on
> >
> >    Palm side        Evo side
> >    ---------        --------
> >    First Name <=> First Name, Middle Name
> >    Last Name <=> Last Name
> >
> > Comments, anyone?
> >
> > -Phil
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gnome-pilot-list mailing list
> > gnome-pilot-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-pilot-list
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-pilot-list mailing list
> gnome-pilot-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-pilot-list

*********************************************************************
Bill Day
bibliophile verizonmail com

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