Mozilla Thunderbird

Bug #52667
Comment #38

Comment 38 for bug 52667

Revision history for this message

In Mozilla Bugzilla #45715, Matthew-mxtelecom (matthew-mxtelecom) wrote on 2005-08-15:

#38

(In reply to comment #35)
> Matthew, you're touching code shared by TB and SeaMonkey, so losing
> functionality for the sake of not having a separate button is just bad. Don't do
> this.

I'd prefer to think of the patch as providing a workaround for broken mailing
list software which neglect to add sensible Mail-Followup-To: and Mail-Reply-To:
headers. Whilst it does stand a risk of culling addresses from the cc fields on
a Reply-All, it's no different to the behaviour which mailnews _already_exhibits
_ when a mailing list mail has Mail-Followup-To: correctly set.

That said, when enabled, i am fully aware that it does change the functionality
for both TB and SeaMonkey, and so should not be considered lightly.

> You should really consider a separate or menu button.

Probably. But this is good enough for my purposes right now.

As regards whether Reply should become Reply-To-Sender or Reply-To-List on list
mails, I guess the confusion stems from whether the term "Reply-To-All" is short
for "Reply-To-All-Possible-Email/News-Addresses" or "Reply-To-All-Possible-People".

I personally think that "Reply-To-All" means "Reply-To-All-Possible-People",
which implies using the email address common to everyone. And that "Reply"
means replying to the single original author of the message. Which means that a
Reply-To-All for a mailing list which cc's all the possible addresses only ever
encourages crossposting and duplication.

This is indeed opposite to the behaviour when in newsgroup mode, which is
obviously unintuitive. The most flexible solution would unquestionably be to
make the Reply button a dropdown to provide the options of Reply-to-Sender or
Reply-to-List depending on your preferences (see also bug 17796). Reply-to-All
would then keep in cc-all-possible-addresses mode.

Unfortunately I no longer have time to attempt a fullblown solution of this (let
alone try to push the required UI changes through Thunderbird & SeaMonkey as a
relative stranger). Please feel free to either consider the above patch as a
minor extension to the existing Mail-Followup-To: behaviour, or ignore it
altogether.

(In reply to comment #35)
> Matthew, you're touching code shared by TB and SeaMonkey, so losing
> functionality for the sake of not having a separate button is just bad. Don't do
> this.

I'd prefer to think of the patch as providing a workaround for broken mailing
list software which neglect to add sensible Mail-Followup-To: and Mail-Reply-To:
headers.  Whilst it does stand a risk of culling addresses from the cc fields on
a Reply-All, it's no different to the behaviour which mailnews _already_exhibits
_ when a mailing list mail has Mail-Followup-To: correctly set.

That said, when enabled, i am fully aware that it does change the functionality
for both TB and SeaMonkey, and so should not be considered lightly.

> You should really consider a separate or menu button.

Probably.  But this is good enough for my purposes right now.

I personally think that "Reply-To-All" means "Reply-To-All-Possible-People",
which implies using the email address common to everyone.  And that "Reply"
means replying to the single original author of the message.  Which means that a
Reply-To-All for a mailing list which cc's all the possible addresses only ever
encourages crossposting and duplication.

This is indeed opposite to the behaviour when in newsgroup mode, which is
obviously unintuitive.  The most flexible solution would unquestionably be to
make the Reply button a dropdown to provide the options of Reply-to-Sender or
Reply-to-List depending on your preferences (see also bug 17796).  Reply-to-All
would then keep in cc-all-possible-addresses mode.

Unfortunately I no longer have time to attempt a fullblown solution of this (let
alone try to push the required UI changes through Thunderbird & SeaMonkey as a
relative stranger).  Please feel free to either consider the above patch as a
minor extension to the existing Mail-Followup-To: behaviour, or ignore it
altogether.