Shoutbox

Just a suggestion for a future version of Plus!:

I am not sure how possible this is, especially with the new MSN 7 looming, but is making the contact list order itself alphabetically when you're using custom contact names possible?

For example, I rename every single contact following the "FirstName LastName" format so I know immediately with whom I'm chatting without having to check their email address first, or decipher some cryptic name. I know when using the custom contact names, MSN changes the contact's names into their email addresses and Plus! replaces them with the custom names you've chosen. MSN then reorders the list alphabetically according to email address. Is this ordering set in stone or is it able to be altered?

I actually remember asking Patchou ages ago while he was coding version 2 whether he could implement this, and at that time he said that it was possible, however he'd need quite a bit more than one person's support behind the suggestion to bother implementing it.

One suggestion given to me at that time was to make separate MSN groups A through Z and stick my contacts in there, but since I sort my contacts by their nationality, that isn't very practical.

Basically I'm just curious if this is still possible given the current version of MSN, and whether anyone else would like to see it implemented as much as I would.

The problem has always been the fact that custom names are actually interpreted by MSN Messenger as email-adresses.

This is because Plus! needs the "email address"-view so it can change the email address to the custom name. (because the email address is the only consistent parameter where Plus! can check upon)

This means that the contact list is sorted on the email address as MSN Messenger itself does the sorting. This is very difficult to change as this requires a serious and big code alteration to the normal control that MSN Messenger uses. Though it is not impossible, it is very hard to do (even for Patchou)...

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not doubting it's hard to do. If I was a coder, I'd gladly offer to help out. It'd just be nicer if the contacts were able to be organized that way.

Thanks, looking forward to the new version.

Cam