[ale] Extremely pedantic question about Thunderbird.

[david w. millians]

Okay, this one is abstruse for search purposes, so I'm asking here.

My boss likes to move his messages from both the sent and inbox into 
subject-related folders. He goes to his sent folder periodically and 
moves the messages.

Here's the peculiar bit. If he forwards a message, it'll grab the 
address from his book, and format it as so:
To: David Millians <millia at panix.com>

If he replies to a message, it'll format as so:
To: "David W. Millians" <millia at panix.com>

So when it replies, it auto-wraps the name in the from header with quotes.

Inexplicably, when you sort the sent folder, the quotes matter.
"David W. Millians" <millia at panix.com>
is way above
David Millians <millia at panix.com>

I did get him to understand the wonders of the search box, and so I 
think he'll cope. However... now I'm curious. This is at heart kind of 
stupid default behavior, by my reckoning. If you're going to include 
quotes, why sort that way?

Does anybody know of a way to either:
a) forget wrapping everything in quotes by default
b) fix the sort order to one that makes sense.

If you try googling, you can enjoy seeing the MASSIVE amounts of false 
positives on the subject.

I've looked in any text file for config options; I've looked in 
extensions to see if anybody has fixed this; I've googled for the 
various deep-config settings stored in prefs.js

I've done everything but look in code, but before I go down that mess, I 
just want to see if somebody has ever thought about this before.
(Oooh. I'll go look in bug listings... but still, help welcome.)

Thanks,
David