965161 - Composition: Allow pre-setting text styles like bold or italic for default HTML font

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Franco]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:26.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/26.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20131205075310

Steps to reproduce:

It would be nice if there would be a possibility in the preferences for the default font (under Settings / Write / General / HTML Options) also select bold and italic font.

Thank you.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Franco, thanks for filing your RFE. Can you describe scenarios for which you think this would be useful?
Imho, making the entire text bold or italics sort of violates the inherent concept of "emphasis" and should be discouraged (feel free to apply manual formatting to that end). So I doubt this would be desirable or useful or even worth the effort to have in core (wontfix?).

Comment 2

[Franco]

Thanks for the reply.

In various other email programs there is such a setting option - and there are people who are accustomed to write fat (bad eyes ...).

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Franco from comment #2)
> Thanks for the reply.
> 
> In various other email programs there is such a setting option - and there
> are people who are accustomed to write fat (bad eyes ...).

If you are talking about "bad eyes" during composition, i.e. need for clearer/larger font for the *sender*, the better thing to do is to just increase the *zoom* during composition, and I personally took care of getting into TB most of the usual methods of zoom control found in Firefox (Ctrl++, Ctrl+-, Ctrl+=, Ctrl+Mousewheel, menus, etc.). If the *sender* has an eyesight problem, it's wrong to change the font formatting for the /recipient/, which is what default font settings do.

I doubt there are many users out there who would require to send the entire text in bold to ease text recognition for the *recipient*. Even in that case, I think the more useful thing to do is to increase the default font size rather than abusing emphasis markers for that purpose. Of course, you're free to do so with manual formatting (Ctrl+A, then bold), but I'm still mostly failing to see the usecase for bold or italic default font.

I'm not dead-against it either (except I'd prefer developer time for more useful things), but perhaps others can add their opinion.

Choices are: Wontfix this and let addons do the job, or confirm the bug as "NEW" RFE.

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

^^

Comment 5

[Franco]

I want to employ anyone unnecessarily, but this option really think would be useful (!).

Another possibility would be, for example, in the input box to insert an option (when writing an email), so can be clicked that "set font as the default" using the right mouse button in the selection window is an option (as described, for example, among others, the email software from t-online is possible). Thus, the problem would be solved.

Maybe there are still others who want to write something for this ......

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Richard, can you comment wrt comment 3?

(In reply to Franco from comment #5)
> I want to employ anyone unnecessarily, but this option really think would be
> useful (!).

So far you're the only one :)

> Another possibility would be, for example, in the input box to insert an
> option (when writing an email), so can be clicked that "set font as the
> default" using the right mouse button in the selection window is an option
> (as described, for example, among others, the email software from t-online
> is possible). Thus, the problem would be solved.

We definitely will not offer "set this font as default font including the emphasis of bold/italics/underline". A simple "Set this font as default" - maybe, feel free to file as a new bug.
Imo it's not very important or useful. Most users don't change their default font often.

> Maybe there are still others who want to write something for this ......

Comment 7

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

I think this is a very seldom needed option and we don't would add it.

I haven't tested it but maybe you could create a template message with the needed font setting and use this for new messages. This wouldn't help on replies but could help already to make your life easier.