I've wondered, if the addresses are properly formatted with RFC822 comments, will they be handled correctly at distribution time? Seems like a reasonable assumption, and it would be very nice indeed to have those real names handy. But it's never gotten to the top of my priorities to poke through the code, or try a test case on my list.
Maybe one of the experts can say for sure one way or the other.
Using my own web-based front end to manage the subscriptions to my lists, I keep real names in my dist files, using the format
user@domain.com (real name)
It doesn't cause any problems at all. I don't remember if I ever tried
real name user@domain.com
but, knowing how choplist works, I think this format would work fine as well.
The changes needed to the subscribe script and the multigram source didn't look trivial, so I've never tried to get SmartList itself to put real names in the dist file.
-cary