329915 - Indicate 'Deleted Attachment' in inline text

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Attachments, enhancement)

Description

[guanxi]

If I delete an attachment, the following appears inline, in the message:

    The original MIME headers for this attachment are:
    Content-Type: application/pdf;
     name="letter.pdf"
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
    Content-Disposition: inline;
     filename="letter.pdf"

Most end users will have no idea what that means or why it's there.  A simple addition will clarify it:

    ATTACHMENT DELETED: "letter.pdf"
    Thunderbird retains the following information for technical reasons:

    The original MIME headers for this attachment are:
    Content-Type: application/pdf;
     name="letter.pdf"
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
    Content-Disposition: inline;
     filename="letter.pdf"

I'm not attached to the wording, only clarifying the jargon that users will see at the bottom of e-mail messages.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, I like that. Taking.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

David, if you're revisiting attachment deletion, please take a look at 
bug 286454.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

Mike, the proposed change is trivial, I think - just changing some text, so I wouldn't say I'm revisiting the whole topic :-)

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

More than one year later, the "trivial change" as David puts it would still be a good idea to clean up the UI: If "Display attachments inline" is on, the text displayed in place of the deleted attachment should start with
        ATTACHMENT DELETED: "letter.pdf".
In fact, that line alone would be quite enough, get rid of the rest! "Original mime headers" of a deleted attachment are just confusing for the average user; and unless anyone explains to me the "technical reasons" for retaining those 3 lonely mime headers, I would claim that it is absolutely useless even for the advanced user to know the content-type, transfer-encoding, or disposition of an attachment which is already deleted for good. If anything, the original size of the attachment or the date of deletion MIGHT be useful (deletion date is currently saved by thunderbird in a hidden header, X-Mozilla-Altered: AttachmentDeleted; date="Thu Apr 19 09:32:50 2007") in order to have some details to search and retrieve the attachment if it has been saved as a file. If you really want to keep these mime-headers of the deleted attachment, please hide them from users (e.g. in X-Mozilla-Altered header).

Comment 5

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

David could you find some time to do this ?

Comment 6

[David :Bienvenu]

I hope someone else would have time to look at this - it's not a TB 3 blocker for me.

Here's the code that would need to change:

http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/mime/src/mimemult.cpp#304

Note that we should probably be using a localized string, and that this text is actually written into the message, so only attachments deleted going forward would have the new text.

Comment 7

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Attachment: proposed fix

This makes the text you see (for instance)

You have deleted an attachment from this message. The original MIME headers for the attachment were:
Content-Type: application/pdf;
	name="DOC270509.pdf"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
	filename="DOC270509.pdf"

It's a bit hard to think of good text for this, as I non-ascii can't be used here without having to jump through hoops to get it a) technically correct b) displayed correctly. (Meaning including the attachment in the text is out).

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

including the attachment *name*

Comment 9

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Comment on attachment 381123 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

The wording is a little awkward but I can't come up with anything truly clearer.

I tried the less direct form.

"The attachment was previously deleted from this message."

However that form seems to leave it a mystery as to who deleted the attachment, thunderbird?  you?

The best I could come up with was this, which is more vague on the time frame of when the attachment was deleted.

"You previously deleted an attachment from this message."

If that doesn't sound worse to anyone, lets go with that.

Comment 10

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Sounds ok to me. David?

Comment 11

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 381123 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

personally, I think "You deleted an attachment..." is OK too - "have deleted" doesn't really add anything, nor does "You previously deleted"

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Ok, so 

"You deleted an attachment from this message. The original MIME headers for
the attachment were:"....

Bryan, are you ok with that?

Comment 13

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Bryan: ^^^

Comment 14

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Yes, sorry. Looks good

Comment 15

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

changeset:   2877:13abe64027e7
http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/13abe64027e7

->FIXED