Closed Bug 118905 Opened 23 years ago Closed 16 years ago

Reply All should include From even if Reply-To set and Reply-To=To

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Product:
MailNews Core
Component:
Composition
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: u32858, Unassigned)

References

(
URL
)

Details

(Whiteboard: [patchlove])

Attachments

(1 file)

patch
2.65 KB, patch
Details | Diff | Splinter Review 
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011012
BuildID:    2001112516

On Yahoo groups I get email, but if i click "reply all" it never does reply to
both the sender and the list. Perrhaps there is a bug in the Reply-to: code, as
this seems to limit the reply to that address, even when clicking on reply all..
below is an example email

---------
From - Wed Jan  9 11:28:14 2002
X-UIDL: bo6"!/56"!'o=!!@AN"!
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Received: from sdfsdfsdfsdfs
X-Sender: sfdd@sfdsdf.ubc.ca
X-Apparently-To: fsdfsdf@yahoogroups.com
Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 8 Jan 2002 15:01:24 -0000
To: fsdfsdf@yahoogroups.com
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
From: "hsdfsdf" <dfsdfsd@fsdfsdfsdf>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Mailing-List: list fsdfsdf@yahoogroups.com; 
Precedence: bulk
Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2002 14:59:29 -0000
Subject: [cjpchat] Re:
Reply-To: fsdffsd@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-UIDL: bo6"!/56"!'o=!!@AN"!

hello 
-----------


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. get an email from yahoogroups, or any other email with reply-to: set
2.click "reply all"
3.see as it only replys to one

Actual Results:  it only replys to one

Expected Results:  reply to all
I think Mozilla is right.
"Reply All" do reply to "From" and "To".
In case "reply-to" is set, "From" address is replaced by "reply-to" address.

Probably, in your case, "reply-to" and "To" are same address. please check.
Because that is what the mailing list is.
So, "Reply All" reply to one address. that is the address of mailing list.
Hello

In my case on Yahoo groups Reply-to: and To: are the same address, yes.
I believe the "reply all" button should do that, reply to all addresses.
(including To: even if the reply-to: is set)

Where as "reply" should only reply to the From: line (or in the case you
mentioned, "reply-to" is set, "From" address is replaced by "reply-to" address.)

So to sum up and include my sugested modification

If someone has sent you an email with you as the only recipient you just click
reply and messenger will reply to the Reply-to: if necessary. My sugested change
will not affect this "reply" button function.

If someone sends you an email via a mailing list and you want to only reply to
that person directly currently there is no option to do this directly.  There
are work arounds but often the From: address is not in your address book etc etc

I am interested to hear what you think of this idea and if anyone else agrees or
disagrees with my point.

JG



Simple solution is Right-Click on From address and select "Compose Mail to".
This is simple and enough for me.
Hello,

Yes there are "work arounds" but IMO its best to fix the problem, not try and
work around it. Your idea means I dont get any of the email that I wanted to
reply to them about...

Unless I cut and paste the email back from the window you sugest creating and
add it to the one already in the message compose window, then if i dont want it
to go to the group i have to delete those ones.

Wouldnt it just be simipler for Reply All to actaully Reply all? These
Workarounds dont save time they are a hiderence.

This problem annoys me, too.  The Reply-To field should only count if you are
hitting the Reply button, not the Reply to All one.  Here another example:

From: "Ben Cochran" <bcochran@purdue.edu>
To: <RPGBoard@ResonatorSoft.org>
Subject: RE: [RPGBoard] RPGBoard configuration
Reply-To: RPGBoard@ResonatorSoft.org

When I hit Reply to All, I expect it to Reply to both Ben and the RPGBoard ML,
but it doesn't.  I put the Reply-To address on the ML to make sure that all
replies go back to the mailing list, but if the person isn't listed in the ML
(as in this case), it should be addressed to the person who wrote it as well. 
The fact that the Copy Address doesn't save the "Ben Cochran" part (even though
it's officially a part of the e-mail address according to the RFC) is also
annoying, but a case for another bug...

Yes, this works on Windows, so I'll (try to) mark it to OS=All.
Hello,

Any agreement on how to take this bug report forward to a solution?

JG
Fix the problem would be my solution.  If necessary, somebody can point me in
the right direction, and I'll do it, but it would probably take me several hours
to figure out how to do it, where an experienced Mozilla programmer can do it in
two minutes.
The goal of using a reply-to header is to redirect replies to another address.
If the sender wish replies to be sent to the sender address as well to another
address, it would have put both address either in the from field or in the
reply-to field! RFC822 (and the updated RFC2822) is clear about that subject: if
a reply-to is specified, the from address should not be used in replies.

I am personnaly against breaking that rule in Mozilla.
Sadly 95% of the net users who send email do not follow this.

IMO reply should honour that Reply-to: override but Reply to all should include
the sender. Its simpler to delete an email address than add one that was not
included, (this is the case in 95% of my emails where i have experienced this
problem)

Could this be enabled by an option if you prefer not to have it as default? I am
not the only user interested in this..

Regards

JG
am not really open to an option but an hidden pref, sure, why not! The code that
need to be modified is in mailnews/compose/src/nsMsgCompose.cpp, function
QuotingOutputStreamListener::OnStopRequest and it should be straight forward...
I argee with jg, but I understand your concerns to follow RFC.  (We wouldn't be
here without RFCs.)  I think there should be either a real option or hidden
option to change this behavior.  (Does the RFC specify requirements for a "reply
to all" button?  It has always been historically used to reply to every address
except the To field.)

BTW, where's a list of all of the hidden options for Mozilla?
comments here seem to agree that the reported issue exists
in my book that means it is confirmed
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Netscape 7.0 is out and this small (but annoying) bug isn't fixed.  Not to be 
pushy, but...
This is still present in 2002102908

Is anyone working on a fix for this?
JG
no, this is not in my top todo list for now. Sorry
*** Bug 199118 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
taking
Assignee: ducarroz → sspitzer
Target Milestone: --- → mozilla1.4alpha
talked it over with ducarroz, who was opposed this this change before, and still is.

note, 4.x doesn't do it either, but OE does.

we're still discussing it, but I don't plan on checking in until he approves.

from section 3.6.3 of RFC 2822

   Note: Some mail applications have automatic reply commands that
   include the destination addresses of the original message in the
   destination addresses of the reply.  How those reply commands behave
   is implementation dependent and is beyond the scope of this document.
   In particular, whether or not to include the original destination
   addresses when the original message had a "Reply-To:" field is not
   addressed here.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Target Milestone: mozilla1.4alpha → ---
That was exactly the paragraph I was looking at.  Therefore, this is not 
breaking RFC specs.  Given that it works in OE and NS 4.x (yes, it does work, 
since that was my old e-mail client for years), I think it's only logical to 
fix it here.
Does any dev still care about this?  It is a definite problem for users, and
does not harm anyone to provide an option, (hidden or otherwise), to provide the
expected functionality.

Mozilla is one of the best list handling mail clients, but this lacking
capability is making it hard to keep using.
What's the status of the patch?  Can we throw it into the main branch?
I would very much like to see this in Mozilla Messenger.

JG
I very much agree that "Reply All" should reply to ALL valid email addresses in
well-known header fields (To, From, Reply-To, etc.).

The meaning of the word "all" is very clear.  It is not "Reply Some"!

As someone else said, it is currently MUCH easier in Mozilla to delete an
unwanted email address from the list of recipients, than to manually
cut-and-paste another address in.  I would very much prefer to have all of the
email addresses appear in the reply message when "Reply All" is pressed.  The
user can then remove the ones that they don't want to send mail to.

Maybe an advanced option would be to have a checkbox for each email address in
the addressbook, defaulting to unchecked:
[ ] Exclude this email address from "Reply All"

This would give users the option to blacklist certain email addresses that they
don't want to reply automatically to, such as their own email addresses.
But, this is a different enhancement, and not really related to this bug.

In summary:
When in doubt, INCLUDE an email address in "Reply All"!
It is far easier for the user to delete an unwanted address from the list than
to have to manually insert an email address that wasn't automatically inserted
like it should have been.
I could not agree more.  Why not vote for it!?

Could someone review/consider the patch please?

This is one of my voted on bugs, my others are on http://jguk.org/ if you are
interested.

Kind regards


JG
Product: MailNews → Core
Someone please work on this!  It's not just mailing lists that suffer for lack
of a true reply-all, but it's the biggest source of annoyance.  Although I feel
that lists owners should not be destroying reply-to (especially when it's set by
the sender), the reply-all really is incomplete to leave out some addresses.

Speaking of which, is there a setting to have reply-all include yourself? 
There's an option in Thunderbird to automatically copy everything to a given
address, but it would be more flexible to have the following two checkboxes:

When replying with reply-all:
[] include all (my) To: addresses
[] include From: address

Since Thunderbird now lets you have multiple identities in addition to accounts,
it can help to have messages sent to your other addresses when sending from one
account with a different To: address.  If it's a message just to yourself from
an individual, you can choose whether that is done by using either reply or
reply-all, if you have the first box checked.  So both are potentially very
handy to have control over.
In fact, the bug 45715 should be fixed, so the mailing list won't have to set the Reply-To: header anymore.
But of course, Thunderbird isn't the only mail client taken in account by these lists, so this hidden preference still make sense.
sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.
Assignee: sspitzer → nobody
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
AFAICT this is the way it works nowadays, no idea when it was fixed. 

If I have a mail with a Reply-To: a@foo.bar and To: b@foo.bar and hit reply all the reply is set up to both a and b.

Or did I misunderstand this bug? Can anyone confirm?
In Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 at least, I can confirm that Reply-All still does not reply to all addresses present, excluding the From address if a Reply-To is present.

Still very annoying when replying to lists.
Updating summary... misunderstood what it was about. As I think comment #19 also did - this doesn't seem to have anything with original *destination* address to do, and would be an RFC violation.
Severity: normal → enhancement
OS: Linux → All
Hardware: PC → All
Summary: Reply All Does not reply to all → Reply All should include From even if Reply-To set and Reply-To=To
Surely what a Mozilla application does when a user clicks its buttons is solely its prerogative?

Perhaps this could be pref option we could turn on, if doing it that way would get the feature in.
Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"
QA Contact: sheelar → composition
Product: Core → MailNews Core
(In reply to comment #31)
> Updating summary... misunderstood what it was about. As I think comment #19
> also did - this doesn't seem to have anything with original *destination*
> address to do, and would be an RFC violation. 

not sure where this is headed, but going to kill 5yr old review request...
Whiteboard: [patchlove]
Attachment #118489 - Flags: review?(ducarroz)
I wouldn't recommend this change, perhaps I just don't understand it completely but the current behavior seems correct to me.  It seems this change would cause people to unintentionally include the reply-to address in their reply all.

In the case where a person sets their reply-to address they are indicating they want mail at the reply-to address only and not the to address.  Including the reply-to goes against this.

I'm going to wontfix this change, at least in terms of the default behavior of Thunderbird.

Maybe this patch could open up the composer such that this behavior could be done in an extension, feel free to reopen for that.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 16 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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