1679100 - Remember custom sender identity used with "catch all" address responses

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, enhancement)

Description

[CC]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:83.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/83.0

Steps to reproduce:

Bug #1518025 has been implemented, which allows Thunderbird to use the delivery address of a message as the responding identity when configured to do so.

Unfortunately, in many cases this approach does not work: perhaps you are creating a new message instead of replying, or perhaps the system that determines the delivery address does not parse the correct email (e.g. in cases where certain forms of plus addressing are used, or the common case where ESP's use "pseudo" delivery addresses; e.g. mine changes the Delivered-To from [e-mail] to Delivered-To: [e-mail], which will not work with the current "catch all" system.)

To overcome this, it would be great if Thunderbird remembered the address used for an outgoing address. For many, this was the most useful feature of the addon Virtual Identity, which has been discontinued with the new plugin architecture, and the developer then implemented #1518025 (to the joy of its many users.)

As a first implementation, it would be fine if it matched exact strings only, and simply remembered sender/recipient pairs with no other options. Upon creating a new message (either from scratch or as a response), TB could check a simple list of the known email address, and if there is a match, pull the last-used sender email address and use that. Even if the user has to do this more than once for a given pair (e.g. for a few variations of the outgoing email address, say using gmail plus addressing, etc.) that small overhead is still much better than having to manually edit the source address every single time they create a message from a custom identity. A full-fledged GUI for modifying/removing pairs would not be necessary for the first implementation (though welcome).

The use case, for those that may not be familiar: many people configure their email server to accept all addresses at the destination domain, and then create "on-the-fly" addresses when they need them, e.g. "[e-mail]", "[e-mail]", "[e-mail]". When they are contacted at those addresses, they need to use those addresses when replying, and even when using the "catch all" feature, often TB does not find the correct address (in cases explained above), so the solution implemented in bug #1518025 does not help.

Thank you for considering this!

Comment 1

[KIMW]

(In reply to CC from comment #0)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:83.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/83.0

Steps to reproduce:

Bug #1518025 has been implemented, which allows Thunderbird to use the delivery address of a message as the responding identity when configured to do so.

Unfortunately, in many cases this approach does not work: perhaps you are creating a new message instead of replying, or perhaps the system that determines the delivery address does not parse the correct email (e.g. in cases where certain forms of plus addressing are used, or the common case where ESP's use "pseudo" delivery addresses; e.g. mine changes the Delivered-To from [e-mail] to Delivered-To: [e-mail], which will not work with the current "catch all" system.)

To overcome this, it would be great if Thunderbird remembered the address used for an outgoing address. For many, this was the most useful feature of the addon Virtual Identity, which has been discontinued with the new plugin architecture, and the developer then implemented #1518025 (to the joy of its many users.)

As a first implementation, it would be fine if it matched exact strings only, and simply remembered sender/recipient pairs with no other options. Upon creating a new message (either from scratch or as a response), TB could check a simple list of the known email address, and if there is a match, pull the last-used sender email address and use that. Even if the user has to do this more than once for a given pair (e.g. for a few variations of the outgoing email address, say using gmail plus addressing, etc.) that small overhead is still much better than having to manually edit the source address every single time they create a message from a custom identity. A full-fledged GUI for modifying/removing pairs would not be necessary for the first implementation (though welcome).

The use case, for those that may not be familiar: many people configure their email server to accept all addresses at the destination domain, and then create "on-the-fly" addresses when they need them, e.g. "[e-mail]", "[e-mail]", "[e-mail]". When they are contacted at those addresses, they need to use those addresses when replying, and even when using the "catch all" feature, often TB does not find the correct address (in cases explained above), so the solution implemented in bug #1518025 does not help.

Thank you for considering this!

I second that.

Comment 2

[Alex]

Adding my vote

Comment 3

[Eyal]

Adding my vote

Comment 4

[Alex]

Anything?

Comment 5

[Alessandro Vesely]

Let me note that it happens to write to the same address using different hats. It also happens to write to several recipients at once, and the sender/ recipients relationships don't necessarily agree. Finally, I often change just the display-name, facetiously, for one message only, and don't want that to be re-proposed.

I find the usual choice of matching the receiving identity on replying works well.

A mechanism to change the From: header of new messages as the composer adds or deletes recipients sounds tricky to me. It should ask for user confirmation. Perhaps, it should limit itself to compile a list of possibilities in the drop-down gadget, without actually committing any change in an automatic fashion.