115590 - Cannot change the format of a message being forwarded

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect, P3)

Description

[Brian S. Craigie]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.6+)
Gecko/20011216
BuildID:    20011216

I want to forward a plain text message, but I want to highlight something in it
and therefore need to send it as HTML, but there is no option to change the
email format to HTML and although I've got the preference set to use the HTML
editor, in this circumstance, it starts the plain text editor.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Send yourself a plain text message
2. Try to forward the message
3. Try to find a way to change the format to HTML

Actual Results:  There isn't a way to do it.

Expected Results:  I expect the Options -> format submenu to be available and
have HTML as a choice.

Maybe it is designed this way, but there are occasions as a postmaster when it
would be useful to change the format from plain text to HTML so that I can
highlight something in bold [such as an erroneous email address] before
forwarding it on, especially when I know for sure that the recipient's mail
client can handle HTML.
If this is designed intentionally like this, please can you take this as a RFE?
 I see no valid reason to stop the users doing this if they want to.
Workaround:  Edit Message As New doesn't let you change the format either, so
the only workaround it to copy the message body, compose a new email in HTML
format, paste the relevant stuff in to the new email, set the subject as [fwd:
{original subject}] and send it on, which is a bit of a pain.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 86862 ***

Comment 2

[Brian S. Craigie]

Please could you re-evaluate this bug.  It is not the same as 86862 and unless
there were to be further details input to the 86862 bug, this bug I am reporting
would not be fixed.

I am not saying that the format option is not in an obvious place.  What I am
saying is that when forwarding a text/plain message, the format option is *not
there at all*

Comment 3

[Brian S. Craigie]

More info:
Holding down the shift key (as advised in bug 86862) has the following
undesirable effects when the HTML editor is set as default:

Shift + Compose : composes in plain text editor instead of html editor and
removes Options -> Format submenu.

Shift + Forward : No different from clicking Forward button alone.

Comment 4

[Sheela Ravindran]

confirming -2001-12-17-06 win98
When html editor is selected for the account, forwarding should bring up the 
html editor. Forwarding plain text message brings up only plain text editor.  
It used to be that if you have html compose checked for the account we always 
opened the html editor if it was plain or html mail that you are forwarding. 

Comment 5

[Sheela Ravindran]

This is indeed a dup of 86862.  But the work around with the shift key does not 
work either. If the shift key starts working then I will mark this as dup.

Comment 6

[Brian S. Craigie]

I am sorry to persist, but as far as I can see, this is not the same as 86862
which is simply complaining that format -> options is not in an obvious place. 
My point is that the format menu isn't there at all when it should be.

The shift key works the way it is described in 86862, but this is not sufficient
for me because they say it is supposed to override the default format.  As I
understand it, that means that if the default editor is HTML and you do
shift-forward, it would compose in the plain text editor.  That's not really the
problem here, because it is already using the wrong editor.

Moving Options -> Format -> {format list} to Format -> {format list} [while I
can see it is desirable] will not fix the bug if the format menu still doesn't
appear when forwarding a plain text message.

I am happy to accept this as a dupe of 86862 if the extra requirement that the
preferred editor is used when forwarding a message is included in the bug.

However, I can't see the point in having the plain text editor at all because an
email composed in the html editor will be sent in plain text anyway if there's
no html formatting in it unless you override it with 'always send in html}', in
which case, that would contradict the plain text editor setting anyway!  The
solution here seems obvious to me;  Always use the html editor, but obey the
Send Format preference when actually sending the mail.

As the bug stands my concern is that the menu option could be moved and the bug
happily closed without fixing this problem.

Comment 7

[Sheela Ravindran]

reporter,
I am not able to reproduce this problem on the latest builds. Can you check this
on a recent build.  This is working for me now.  If you have html compose
selected for the account then regardless of forwarding a plain text message or
html message will bring up the html compose.  
Can you check this on the recent build?

Comment 8

[Brian S. Craigie]

Yes, it seems to be fine now on 2002013103

Thank you very much.

I appreciate all the work that goes into Mozilla.

Comment 9

[Sheela Ravindran]

Marking this bug as worksforme based on the reporter's comments.  The format of
a forwarded message can be html or in plain text compose.  Please reopen this
bug if you see this problem on the recent builds.

Comment 10

[laurel]

marking verified worksforme based on reporter's last comments, sheelar's last
comments.