[Owncloud] Contacts field formatting - Names and postal addresses in particular

[Chris Green]

On Sat, Mar 09, 2013 at 06:41:22PM +0100, Thomas Tanghus wrote:
> On Saturday 09 March 2013 16:11 Chris Green wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 09, 2013 at 02:36:17PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
> > > Name fields:-
> > > 
> > > I would *really* prefer to be able to sort on last/family name.  It
> > > seems as if owncloud sorts on the display name and doesn't offer any
> > > alternative.
> 
> Yes currently only by display name. We discussed it briefly in 
> https://github.com/owncloud/apps/issues/97
> Feel free to file a feature request :)
> 
OK, I'll definitely do that as sorting by family name makes *much* more
sense.  Where do I put feature requests - are they just issues?

> > > In addition it would be useful if the name editing was more explicit
> > > about how display name, given name and family name are handled.
> > > 
> > > What is one expected to do for business names?
> 
> What do you mean about business names? Currently ORG and TITLE support is 
> implemented https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2426#section-3.5
>  
The trouble is that if one just types a name in the "Enter name" field
it all gets put into Family Name, so there's no differentiation between
my friend "James Smith" and a company called "Jammy Dodgers", they both
get sorted by the "Jam....".


> > It actually seems rather more broken than I thought.
> > 
> > If you simply enter a name in the "Enter name" box then *all* of it gets
> > put into Last Name/Family Name in the vCard - this is plain wrong.  If
> > you then synchronise this with another program that does things right it
> > all gets very confusing.
> 
> Well it's a compromise between simplicity in the UX and supporting the rfc as 
> good as possible. The current implementation parses the formatted display name 
> after a basic, western style first name, additional names and last name and 

No it doesn't, if I enter "James Smith" as the name then it's simply
filed with a Family Name of "James Smith" and all the other fields
are empty.

Even more confusing, if I edit the "James Smith" entry and put "Smith,
James" instead then the Family Name is *still* "James Smith"!

Entering "Smith, James" as a new entry still puts the whole of "Smith,
James" into the family name.


> doesn't deal with pre- and suffixes. I explained some of the reason in 
> https://github.com/owncloud/apps/issues/693
> 
> You also have to take into consideration that this is a relatively simple web 
> app, that is supposed to work sufficiently for the vast majority. It still 
> needs a lot of polishing, but it will never be a full blown business 
> application. You can easily sync with a desktop application via CardDAV if you 
> want full all the bells and whistles ;)
> 
> I've CC'd to Jan-Christoph Borchardt who is the main man for UX issues.
> 
Yes, OK, that's what I'm doing to some extent.

However just about every other address book I've played with has
explicit separate fields for First Name and Last Name, I think it would
be better if owncloud did the same.

-- 
Chris Green