As the co-listowner that Douglas mentionned who regularly makes a
printout of the subscription list arranged by name I want to support
his statement that characters like ""  "", <  > around a subscriber's
name really do play hob with the sorting.
 
Eric said that Listserv automatically places  "  " around names that
contain some special characters, such as the period.  Well, I am looking
at my names printout and there are a number with the "  " that do not
contain any special characters that I can see, .e.g.
        "Beth Fellendorf"
        "Michelle Chan"
        "Ufu Library"
        "Canterbury Newsgate"
        "Thousand Oaks Library"
 
And what is the explanation for the names with the angle brackets:
        <GPO Cataloging Branch I>
        <Buffalo & Erie Co. Pub. Lib.>   Why isn't this one in
                quotation marks, with all its special characters?
 
        Yours in puzzlement,
 
Judith Hopkins, Listowner of Autocat
     [log in to unmask]
 
On Sat, 9 Nov 1996, Winship wrote:
 
> On Fri, 8 Nov 1996, W Schipper wrote:
> > administrator.  One problem we come across regularly is the differing
> > formats for the "From:" line.  Of course the tag itself is standard,
> > but the format of what follows is not.  For example, I've seen the
> > following (I'll use my own name and address as an example):
> >
> > From:   William Schipper <[log in to unmask]>
> > From:   "William Schipper" <[log in to unmask]>
> > From:   (William Schipper) <[log in to unmask]>
> > From:   Schipper, William <[log in to unmask]>
> > From:   William [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
>
> LISTSERV will take the "name" in whatever format the subcriber gives,
> and that is the "name" listserv uses.  As to correcting the "name"
> for distribution, Eric knows best about that.  However, things like
> Winship, Douglas
> <Douglas Winship>
> (Douglas winship)
> Douglas Winship [log in to unmask]
> etc.
>
> really screw up the list as far as sorting by name goes.  I rarely
> do that but a co-owner does regularly, so when a new sub comes in
> with the wrong format I just change it to one which will sort properly.
>
> Douglas
>        Douglas Winship   Hays County, Texas  [log in to unmask]
>                     Secondary AUTOCAT Listowner
>                               MEDLAB-L
>