1065211 - [reply header type] mailnews.reply_header* offers no option for accurate timestamp

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 218926

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[Felix Miata]

Current date/time options for the attribution line's reply header type take one of the following basic forms, either:

	[Author] wrote on 2014-09-05 14:29:

or 

	 On 2014-09-05 02:29 PM, [Author] wrote:

The important thing they have in common WRT this report is absence of a UTC offset. Seen by a recipient of the reply, these choices can exhibit a margin of error of up to 24:59:59, depending on applicable seasons, time zones, and time zone offsets from UTC, of both original and response. To reduce error to zero, an offset from UTC should be appended to Author's clock time, at least via option, as is available in such mail clients as e.g. Claws Mail, Evolution, G2, Mutt, Opera, Pan, PMMail and Unison.

Implemented, the offset might in prefs.js be as follows:

	 user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_authorwroteondate", "#1 wrote on #2 #3 #4:");

where #4 would be the (new) time zone offset from the message being replied to. Applied, it might look thus:

	 Foo East wrote on 2014-12-01 02:00 (GMT+0800):

Another possibility:

	 Bar West wrote on 2014-11-30 13:00 -0500:

Looking at both possibilities, while ignoring the offset, which is the effective current behavior, they look as if dispatched in different months, even though both were dispatched during the same sidereal minute and day.