Address label formatting in Contact mode

[Ben Roberts-5]

Hi all,

I've been trying to figure out the address label formatting in
Evolution's contacts/address book.

As near as I can work out, the default formatting when a label is
constructed (and exported to VCARD format) is something like the
following:

[Address Line 1]
[Address Line 2]
(etc.)
[City], [State]
[Postcode]
[PO Box Number]
[Country]

There are a number of problems with this format. It is very nonstandard
(for example, I can't think of a single country where a PO Box number
would come last except for the country). Also, it seems inflexible and
doesn't correctly account for differences in addressing standards
between countries.

For example, the majority of my contacts are in either the US, Australia
or New Zealand. As far as I can tell, the standard formatting for the US
is:

[Address]
[City] [State/Province] [Postcode]
[Country]

and in Australia:

[Address]
[City]  [State/Province]  [Postcode]
[Country]

and in New Zealand:

[Address]
[State/Province]
[City] [Postcode]
[Country]

Yes, for New Zealand I'm aware that's slightly strange. This formatting
is because addresses (at least within large cities) in New Zealand have
a separate "Suburb" field, for which certain other address programs
(such as Apple's Address Book) use the State/Province field - I was
following their lead.

In any case, it seems odd to me that there isn't a straightforward way
of building these standards into the LABEL generation. Maybe there is
such a way (e.g., a plain-text file to be edited) and I've overlooked
it? If that's so, I appreciate the patience of anyone who's prepared to
point me in the right direction. If not, how easy would it be to add
such a feature in?

A related matter concerns the PO Box number field. I note that the text
"PO Box" is not prepended to the number - thus if I put (e.g.) "118435"
in the PO Box field, it is represented in the label, not as "PO Box
118435", but as plain "118435". Is this to take account of the different
names for PO Boxes in different countries, and is the user expected to
handle this by explicitly adding "PO Box" to the field? If so, that's no
trouble - as long as I'm aware of it. But if it's supposed to be set as
an internationalisation or localisation thing, it would be good if it
does so.

I'll also acknowledge that these problems may be fixed by now (e.g., in
version 2.27). I tried to download and compile that version from the git
repository, but ran into all kinds of dependency horrors (especially
concerning NSPR and NSS) and decided life's too short for that. So I
guess I'm waiting on the next version to be released into the Ubuntu
repository.

For the benefit of list members, this is the current state of my
installation:

O/S: Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) - Linux kernel 2.6.28-13
Evolution: version 2.26.1

If there's anything else you need to know, please don't hesitate to ask.

Any help much appreciated.

TIA,

Ben


_______________________________________________
Evolution-list mailing list
Evolution-list@...
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list

[Nick Jenkins]

> A related matter concerns the PO Box number field.

The PO Box field seems a little odd and out-of-place to me. Its tab
order is wrong, I don't know if it adds much, from what you described it
has issues with making labels and it doesn't add the "PO Box" part to
number-only fields, and I have to wonder if maybe the simplest overall
solution it just to ditch it, and have people use the free-form Address
field instead: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=574710

-- All the best,
Nick.

_______________________________________________
Evolution-list mailing list
Evolution-list@...
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list