[Mailman-Developers] Correcting the display name in the recipient address

[Aditya Divekar]

This is regarding the solution for issue #194
<https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/issues/194> in mailman-core
The discussion for it can be found in the related merge request here
<https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/merge_requests/104>
As suggested by Barry, the discussion has been shifted here.

Whenever an address is subscribed to a mailing list, we need to assign a
recipient name to the outgoing welcome mail. eg. To: Anne <anne at example.com
>
'Anne' being the recipient name.
Now if the address is subscribed without a display name, we should look for
other options for the display name.

Suppose you have a user with two linked addresses, one of which is the
preferred address. Only the preferred address has a display name, and the
user does not. Now in the scenario where the other linked address(not the
preferred one) is subscribed to a mailing list without providing a display
name, it would be natural to check if the user has a display name, and use
that if it exists. But the user too does not have a display name in this
case. In such a case should we perform a further check and try to use the
preferred address's display name if it exists or simply use an empty string
instead?

In the opinion I gave, in case we are not supplied with a display name, we
should check the user display name followed by the preferred address
display name, and use them in the specified order respectively. If none
exist, empty string would be used.

In a more general scenario, as pointed out by Barry to question this
method, suppose a user has multiple linked addresses, only one of which has
a display name, and its neither the preferred address, nor the subscribed
address. Should the display name search algorithm find that one too, since
it still is a linked address for the user and hence contains valid user
information?

Thanks.

Aditya.