OddThinking

An Open Letter to the developers of my next email client

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Let me tell you about all the names of my friend.

His real name is Herschel Schmoikel Krustofski (*Not his real real name).

His email is hsk.

When he sends an email, his email application includes a human-readable name in the SMTP headers. He has set it to “Krustofski, H. S.” He used to have it set to “herschel”, but he made it look more professional a couple of months ago.

When I email him, I normally refer to him by his nickname “Krusty The Clown” because I have trouble spelling “Herschel”.

Please do me some favours.

• Please understand that these are all the same person.
• Please search in the Nicknames field when resolving email addresses.
• Please don’t primarily display the name that his SMTP headers have for him; please give priority to the name I entered for him.
• Please group all his emails – including his old ones – together when sorting.
• Please don’t include my nickname for him in the outgoing emails; he doesn’t need to know I can’t spell Herschel. The other people being cc’ed on the email don’t need to know I call him Krusty.

Yours faithfully,

Julian