Re: people's names in Contacts

Me:

>> First problem: When I look for help in Kontact (under Ubuntu) 
>> I'm told "Could not launch the KDE Help Center: Could not find
>> service 'khelpcenter'." Synaptic can't find "khelpcenter" 
>> either. I'm literally helpless. Does help need KDE?

Kevin Krammer:

>> Maybe an incomplete install. Check if you have the package 
>> called khelpcenter4 installed.

I don't. And it seems that I can't get it via any way explicitly
recommended for the "lpia" (i.e. weedy little) computer I'm now using. But
in my office (soon to be unlocked after the new year holiday) I also have a
Kubuntu machine with more muscle.

> What I usually do is:
> - when I create a new contact I click on the "edit 
>   name..." button
> - inserting information as available
> - chose "reverse with comma" as the formatting option

Hah! I hadn't noticed that option. Thank you.


Ingo Klcker wrote:

> Sorting by pronunciation is an interesting idea thought it makes me 
> wonder how to sort the phonemes. With a mix of English and Japanese 
> names this might work somewhat, but probably not with other
> languages. 

Maybe I didn't explain well. If I knew a Mr Cabinett and a Mr Kabinett (a
Caligaresque example) I wouldn't want them together; no, one would be under
C and the other under K. However, if I knew a 
, then even software written expressly and expertly for Japan would
be unable to guess if the surname (first two characters) was 
tani or ya (either is possible) or if the given name (last two) was
Sachiko or Yukiko (again, either is possible). Software written in/for
Japan would have a field in which the pronunciation would be typed in. 

Better software guesses this but then lets you correct. Thus for example if
I make a new acquaintance called Oyama Hitoshi 
, then I'd type  into the name field of his brand new entry in
my cellphone directory; and, in a different field, the phone would guess
[the "katakana" (phonemic) equivalent of] "Koyama Hitoshi", as "Koyama" is
a commoner reading than "Oyama" and "Hitoshi" is a commoner one than "Jin",
etc; I'd then merely have to change "Ko" to "O" and I'd be done. The name
would appear as 
 but be indexed as "Koyama Hitoshi" (via an ordering system with
which I won't bore you).

> Quite frankly, I have no idea how sorting works in Japanese. [. . .]

If you're interested, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goj%C5%ABon starts to
explain and I can explain further IFF there's a demand.

> At least, in China in emails sent to English recipients it 
> appears to be common to write the name in Latin characters
> followed by the name in the Chinese script in parenthesis.
> But I don't know a good way to achieve this with Kontact's
> address book.

Perhaps I'll have to install Japanese-interface Kontact. It's a pity.
Ideally Kontact would have an extra field for names, so that for example
somebody with German and Korean "contacts" could have them all in a single
sequence, whether ordered alphabetically or in the Korean way. 

> You wrote that you wanted to print the labels with gLabels. 
> Does it read addresses (e.g. in vCard format)? If yes, then
> writing the name as "Joe Bloggs" can probably be done in 
> gLabels.

Apparently it's designed to digest vCard data, yes.

I've just taken a look at what Wikipedia (for what this is worth) says
about vCard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard -- in addition to "FN /
Formatted Name / the formatted name string associated with the vCard
object" there's "N / Name / a structured representation of the name of the
person, place or thing associated with the vCard object"; this sounds
vaguely promising.


Anne Wilson:

> [. . .] the instructions depend on which version 
> you are using, due to a recent change.  The newest, 
> (currently 4.4 Pre) offers you Display: - which is 
> where you'd put this in. 

My own version, freshly downloaded yesterday, is 1.2.9. That and
http://uclue.com/index.php?xq=2745 suggest to me that it's time to do a
radical update. It's probably better for me to shut up and stop wasting
your time till that's accomplished.

PE