1390122 - No way to prevent Thunderbird from adding names from outgoing emails to address book in existing cards

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[Jonathan Kamens]

There is a preference to tell Thunderbird whether to add outgoing email addresses to the address book automatically (mail.collect_email_address_outgoing, used in nsMsgSend.cpp).

There is, alas, no corresponding preference to tell Thunderbird whether to add the _names_ associated with outgoing email addresses to the address book, if the address book entry has no name. I've looked at the code in nsAbAddressCollector.cpp, and there appears to be no way around this: If you have an email address in your address book that has no name associated with it, and you send an email message to that address, and the email you send has a name associated with it in the outgoing email header, then that name gets added to the address book entry unconditionally.

This really should be configurable.

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

We'll take a patch ;-)

Comment 2

[Jonathan Kamens]

I think a patch would involve:

* add a preference to control the behavior;
* add the preference to the appropriate preferences pane;
* localize the preference text and tooltip; and
* modify the code to obey the preference.

There's a question of whether it would be appropriate to have nsAbAddressCollector.cpp read the preference directly, or have nsMsgSend.cpp read it and pass it through to nsAbAddressCollector.cpp. I think given that both modules are in mailnews, it would be safe to add the preference to mailnew/mailnews.js and have nsAbAddressCollector.cpp read it directly.

I don't know how localization of Thunderbird core works at all. Can you summarize for me briefly what's required to add a new string to Thunderbird, or point me at a document which does so?

Would I be expected to patch SeaMonkey as well, or would it be on somebody else to port the functionality over to SeaMonkey?

Am I missing anything?

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Geoff, can you offer opinion on comment 2?

Comment 4

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

(In reply to Jonathan Kamens from comment #2)

• add a preference to control the behavior;
• add the preference to the appropriate preferences pane;
• localize the preference text and tooltip; and
• modify the code to obey the preference.

To add the preference text you just put it in the right place (e.g. here's the strings for the most relevant part of the preferences) and localization will happen automagically when the translators provide updates.

Also, here's the code for that checkbox in the preferences.

You're not expected to patch SeaMonkey, in fact by doing things in mailnews SeaMonkey will get them too, just without the UI pieces. I wouldn't worry about those.