1144757 - Internationalization of reply indication (RE:) in subject field

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[xracoonx]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:36.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/36.0
Build ID: 20150305021524

Steps to reproduce:

Reply to an email that was send from a Swedish mail program.


Actual results:

In the subject field "Re:" was added even though it already contained a Swedish equivalent "SV:". This then lead in the long conversation to an unreadable subject field.


Expected results:

(1) No "Re:" should have been added, or
(2) "SV:" should be replaced by "Re:".

I am not fully sure which is the better variant.

(I guess similar problems occur with other languages as well.)

Comment 1

[xracoonx]

Here is how the unreadable subject field actually looked like: 

"SV: SV: SV: SV: SV: SV: ..."

I guess the email program on the other side of the conversation was clever enough to replace my "Re:" with "SV:".

Comment 2

[xracoonx]

I guess in principle the solution would be to have a lists of international "Re:" equivalents that is checked against before adding "Re:" (or any equivalent). Here is a small (west) list I found on the web:

Danish / Norwegian
SV (Svar)
VS (Videresendt)

Finnish
VS (Vastaus)
VL (Välitetty)

French
RE (Réponse)
TR (Transfert)

German
AW (Antwort)
WG (Weitergeleitet)

Greek
ΑΠ (Απάντηση)
ΠΡΘ (Προωθημένο)

Italian
R or RIF (Riferimento)
I (Inoltro)

Icelandic
SV (Svara)
FS (Framsenda)

Swedish
SV (Svar)
VB (Vidarebefordrat)

Spanish
RE (Responder)
RV (Reenviar)

Portuguese
RES (Resposta)
ENC (Encaminhado)

Polish
Odp (Odpowiedź)
PD (Podaj dalej)

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

As far as I know, the "Re:" is standardized and as such shouldn't be localized. The fact that other e-mail clients (especially Microsoft Outlook/Exchange) have done so shouldn't be enough motivation to break that specification (though the standard says "may" rather than "must" which makes a difference, but states "Re:" very specifically as "an abbreviation of the Latin 'in re', meaning 'in the matter of'").

There is a hidden preference setting mailnews.localizedRe which you can use to treat incoming subject prefixes as equivalent to "Re:" and thus avoid repetition of Re-like prefixes in chains of replies. That preference setting is localized, but not many locales have actually set it.

Comment 4

[rsx11m]

See also bug 168381 which got won't-fixed, I don't think the rationale has changed since.

Comment 5

[xracoonx]

I see the point about non-localization, because "Re:" is standardized. But this seems to count only against my first suggestion, i.e., (1) No "Re:" should have been added. However, the second suggestion, i.e., (2) "SV:" should be replaced by "Re:", might be compatible with this. And even more so, since it might reinforce it.
In that sense my suggestion is also quite different from the https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=168381.

Comment 6

[rsx11m]

(In reply to xracoonx from comment #5)
> (1) No "Re:" should have been added. However, the second suggestion, i.e.,
> (2) "SV:" should be replaced by "Re:", might be compatible with this.

Try setting mailnews.localizedRe to "SV" (without quotes) in the Config Editor. You get there with the Options menu from the [≡] button. Then, for *new* messages coming in after that, you should see it replaced with "Re:" already in the message list, and also done so when replying to it. For *old* messages this won't have any effect, given that the "Re:" string is identified when building the database. However, right-clicking on the folder in the listing to the left and selecting Properties from the menu, then clicking "Repair Folder" should also apply the localized equivalent to the old messages contained in that folder (may take a while).

If that was your main concern, that should be implemented already (just not easily accessible).

Comment 7

[xracoonx]

Yes that sounds reasonable. Is it possible to give a list of "Re:" equivalents? And why is this feature not set by default?

Comment 8

[rsx11m]

(In reply to xracoonx from comment #7)
> Yes that sounds reasonable. Is it possible to give a list of "Re:" equivalents?

Yes, separate by comma: SV,VS,AW,ΑΠ etc.

> And why is this feature not set by default?

The idea apparently was that localizers fill in the default equivalents as needed, which in part was done (but as said, many locales just leave that option empty by default).

Comment 9

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

(In reply to xracoonx from comment #7)
> Yes that sounds reasonable. Is it possible to give a list of "Re:"
> equivalents? And why is this feature not set by default?

You're just not using a Swedish tb build.
http://mxr.mozilla.org/l10n-mozilla2.0/source/sv-SE/suite/chrome/mailnews/region.properties#21

Comment 10

[xracoonx]

(In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #9)
> You're just not using a Swedish tb build.
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/l10n-mozilla2.0/source/sv-SE/suite/chrome/mailnews/
> region.properties#21

That's right. I still tend to communicate with Swedish people. And I don't think it advisable to install another version of tb just for that reason.

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yes, it just means you have to set the pref.