1368345 - Thunderbird enforces single message ID in In-Reply-To, doesn't allow it to be modified by caller

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Jonathan Kamens]

According to RFC 2822 section 3.6.4, the In-Reply-To field of a message may contain multiple message IDs just like References. When it does, this indicates that the message is directly replying to multiple previous messages.

I am in the process of creating an add-on which does exactly that, i.e., allows the user to reply to multiple previous messages in a single reply to all the senders of all the previous messages. I would therefore like to (correctly) populate In-Reply-To with the mesage IDs of all the messages being replied to.

Unfortunately, Thunderbird makes this impossible. It does not provide any ability to set the In-Reply-To field as such before the message is handed off for transmission, and even if I hard-coded a special In-Reply-To field into the message header before it is sent, its contents would be forcefully overwritten by mime_generate_headers in nsMsgCompUtils.cpp.

In short, Thunderbird's core code is preventing me from making my add-on standard-compliant. :-(

While I understand the desire for Thunderbird to be "smart" and set In-Reply-To automatically when one isn't provided, it should also provide a way for the setting to be overridden, e.g., by allowing a value for this field to be specified in nsIMsgCompFields and to use the value there when it is specified.

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Sounds like an enhancement to me. We'll accept a patch ;-)

Comment 2

[Markus Elfring]

• Is this issue affected by any recent software developments?
• Will involved software components be improved any further?

Comment 3

[Markus Elfring]

(In reply to Jonathan Kamens from comment #0)
How would the software situation look like if the header information “References” would be omitted?

Comment 4

[Jonathan Kamens]

(In reply to Markus Elfring from comment #3)

(In reply to Jonathan Kamens from comment #0)
How would the software situation look like if the header information “References” would be omitted?

I don't know, but this isn't really the point. I need to be able to include both References and In-reply-to in the messages I construct. I shouldn't need to leave out one field in order to be able to set another correctly.