65472 - X-mailer in addition to User-Agent

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Kousik Nandy]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; 0.7) Gecko/20010109
BuildID:

If we have pref("mailnews.headers.showUserAgent",true)
then we get to see the User-Agent in the headers. Now, there are
several mail clients (except our Mozilla, mutt to name a few)
use X-Mailer to identify themselves. Can't this happen that when
showUserAgent is true, then mozilla shows User-Agent or X-Mailer
whichever is available?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. set pref("mailnews.headers.showUserAgent",true)
2. the User-Agent: header will appear for the mail-clients
   who put the tag in the mail header.	
3.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

it shows User-Agent as per now. Browsing source of a mail to myself i see:

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-3 i686; en-US; m18) Gecko/20010113

Do you mean it should say "X-Mailer" instead?

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

No.  The request is that when _reading_ mail with Mozilla it treat X-Mailer as
an alternative to User-Agent.  That is, something like:

if (mailnews.headers.showUserAgent == true) {
  if (User-Agent) {
    show (User-Agent);
  } else if (X-Mailer) {
    show (X-Mailer);
  }
}

This is a valid RFE.  setting status to New.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Setting status to New for real this time.  Going to attach a proposed patch. 
adding some keywords.

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Attachment: Proposed patch (against top level of tree)

Comment 5

[Scott MacGregor]

I'm a bit leary about adding more xul elements in the message pane for X-mailer
support. Mostly because I've been reading (see simon's posting in the newsgroup)
that X-mailer is a deprecated header anyway....thoughts?

Comment 6

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Don't add X-Mailer, please. It's old.

Comment 7

[Håkan Waara]

I'm voting for wontfix...someone should resolve it as so.

Comment 8

[basic]

Besides being "old" is there any other reason why X-mailer should not be used?
The reporter just wanted mail&news to display X-mailer when user-agent is not
available.

Comment 9

[Jason Neems]

Given that AOL e-mail still uses X-Mailer, and the commercial builds support AOL
e-mail, I think this would be a nice enhancement and a good reason for fixing
this. Example AOL X-Mailer line:

X-Mailer: AOL 6.0 for Windows AU sub 238

Comment 10

[Scott Tran (Wildcard)]

This seems more reasonable than displaying nothing at all if no UserAgent is
found... Any progress on this ?

Comment 11

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 110304 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Scott Tran (Wildcard)]

Does the Attached patch still work ? Why cant we just check it in if it
works.... assuming the reviews and sr are there

Comment 13

[timeless]

iirc nc4 is yet another mailer that sends X-mailer. Yes it's been end of lifed, 
but that doesn't mean that people are ready to abandon it.

If you don't want an extra xul field we could abuse the one used for User-
Agent.  But, I don't think the cost of the xul box is a good reason to refuse 
to accept this.  If someone feels that it's too expensive then could that 
someone please provide numbers showing the costs of: UserAgent, 
UserAgent+Xmailer, and Xmailer for some sample of mail (plus stats indicating 
which field was actually present, since you're probably going to pay more for 
the one that was actually used...).  I know that news.eax.com has some usage 
stats for the Xmailer/Useragent, if someone cares I can dig for that post.

Comment 14

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Since the whole mailnews front end got rewritten _after_ that patch was created
I seriously doubt that it still works....

Seth, could we have a call on this?  We should either WONTFIX this or fix it. 
Let's not just leave it in limbo.

Comment 15

[Scott MacGregor]

As the module owner I'm not interested in supporting a deprectated header such
as X-mailer. Just go into view all header mode if you are really interested in
this. 

Comment 16

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

wontfix per module owner.

Comment 17

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

verified, module owner has the last say.

Comment 18

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

*** Bug 155790 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 19

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 178151 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 191945 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 21

[buggeriam]

I really would like to see this fixed.  Let me whip up a patch.

Comment 22

[buggeriam]

Attachment: This makes the xmailer string a preference.

Comment 23

[Benedikt Kantus]

The module owner wants this to be wontfix, it makes no sense coming up with a patch.

Comment 24

[Jerry Baker]

Sure it does. That way people can apply it to their local tree to bypass the
module owner's influence on their usage of Mozilla.

Comment 25

[Scott MacGregor]

FYI, if you have the hidden pref set, and the message does not contain a
user-agent string, but it does contain a x-mailer then we show the x-mailer
value in place of the user-agent value. 

This is a fix I just back ported from thunderbird into mozilla mail so it is in
both now. 

Comment 26

[Pratik]

It seems like Mozilla is displaying X-Mailer as the User-Agent so my Mozilla
started saying

User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Is this the intent? Why isn't the line above

X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

Even when I do Full Header, I see it as User-Agent instead of X-Mailer. Its only
when I do View Source do I see that its actually X-Mailer not User-Agent.

I don't like this "change". Is it acceptable to other people? 

Reopening bug since we should mark this as fixed instead of wontfix

Comment 27

[Pratik]

Fixed as per comment 25. Also I see the fix in my local build.

Comment 28

[:aceman]

It looks like Outlook is still using X-mailer, even if somebody thinks it is 
old... I have the pref for useragent set to true (in moz 1.3), but guess how 
many emails I get have any useragent displayed for them. Practically zero! 
Because only Mozilla writes useragent in its outgoing emails. But everybody 
uses Outlook Express. That made the pref somehow useless. Therefore I am happy 
that were are now doing to display both useragent and x-mailer. Thanks for 
fixing this.

Comment 29

[Michael Dunn]

Can we get someone to actually verify this bug as fixed... ? I am having a hard
time proving it is fixed... using Thunderbird,

Comment 30

[Michael Dunn]

Nevermind I am brain dead... I just verified thid bug as fixed... (I needed to
the correct pref.js file, mailnews.js)

Comment 31

[Jacek Piskozub]

Yes, it has been fixed for ages. Thanks for noticing that the bug was still not
verified.