168381 - Hardcoded "Re:" for reply email subject

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Ying-Lin Xia]

Start Mail, forward or reply any email, on the mail subject, the string "Fwd:" 
or "Re:" are not localizable. See mailnews/compose/src/nsMsgCompose.cpp and 
mailnews/mime/src/mimedrft.cpp.

Comment 1

[Hanspeter Niederstrasser]

Please don't change "Re:" to localized strings.  Usenet tradition is that this
is the latin word "Re", not short for English "Reply".  Imagine the case of an
english message with the subject:

"Here is my subject"

Get's replied by a German localized reader and becomes:

"Aw: Here is my subject".

An english localization replies and it then becomes:

"Re: Aw: Here is my subject".

An {favorite language} localized reader replies to that and the subject is now:

"Qx: Re: Aw: Here is my subject".

This will be murder on threading by subject algorithms.  An alternative would be
to clip the "Prefix: " string and replace it with the localized string (eg "Re:
subject" would become "Aw: subject" when a German replies to the message), but
if the recipient is not using Mozilla, the continuous prepending of the reply
prefix will occur at the next hop.  Prefix multiplication would still occur.

I realize this bug is explicitly about mail and not news, but the two components
greatly overlap.

Comment 2

[Bradley Baetz (:bbaetz)]

See GNKSA 5 (http://www.gnksa.org/gnksa.txt) and RFC1036, section 2.1.4 (GNKSA
gives a rationale).

Yes, thats for usenet, but the same arguments apply for mail, for both
archiving, threading, and sorting.

Please WONTFIX/INVALID this....

Comment 3

[marina]

Please, read the discussion about "Re" in bugs## 29179, 108163

Comment 4

[Ying-Lin Xia]

Well, AOL Brazil people said "... AOL Clients and Outlook 2000 had translated 
the text... why can't we?"

Comment 5

[Frank Tang]

"localizable" and "localize it" are two different thing.
localizable mean the localization can change it if they want to
localize it mean localization change it. 

I do understand that translat it could cause a lot of problem. But those problem
exist as today, regardless Mozilla make it localizable or not. Make it
localizable in mozilla won't introduce NEW problems into this world since
Outlook and AOL already introduced them as today. 

Let's make it localizable in mozilla so people won't said we are worst than
other software. And let the people localize it be blamed (or be praise) by
translate it. 

Comment 6

[ji]

Per Frank's request, checked this out on the following mail clients:
AOL 7.0-J:     not translated
Outlook XP Ja: not translated
OE Ja:         not translated
Eudora 5.0-Ja: not translated
Post Pet:      not translated

Comment 7

[Hanspeter Niederstrasser]

"Re: " comes from a latin source.  Using a latin prefix in an english localized
program gives "Re: ".  Using a latin prefix in a chinese localized program will
still be "Re: ".  Similarly with a martian swahili localized program.

As for giving the user the option to localize the prefix, a clear distinction
must be made between what gets displayed on the user's machine and what actually
gets sent out.  A reply message should not be sent out prefixed with another
string.  This breaks the RFC.  For what gets _displayed_ on the local user's
Mozz, Bug 29179 deals with that (particularly comments 4, 5, & 7).

Comment 8

[Stephan Slabihoud (:slabbi)]

I suggest to handle this like mentioned in Bug 29179 comment 6. Mozilla should
try to fix mistakes done by broken mail clients (perhaps switchable by a user.js
entry).

Comment 9

[Michele Carlson]

adding nsbeta1-

Comment 10

[Bogdan Stroe]

*** Bug 244306 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Matthew Hodgson]

A patch to customize the [Fwd: %s] behaviour has been added to bug 194788. 
However, I agree that Re: is sufficiently standardised that it shouldn't be open
to any user customization.

Comment 12

[Vidar Haarr (not reading bugmail)]

(In reply to comment #11)
> A patch to customize the [Fwd: %s] behaviour has been added to bug 194788. 

Since that bug has a patch, lets make this bug about reply only.
While I agree that it should not be customized, that need not stop us from
making it possible to customize it - not everyone shares our view on things.

Comment 13

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22aw+antwort+aw+antwort%22 says very clearly that those people who think they know better than RFC 2822 section 3.6.5 are wrong, and can't even interop among themselves. Those people who don't "share our view on things" are people who want to break interop on the internet: they are our antithesis.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

xref bug 108163, Bug 213004
does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_Principle apply?

Comment 15

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

As Phil points out, the current behaviour is even required by RFC2822

[subject field]...

   These three fields are intended to have only human-readable content
   with information about the message.  The "Subject:" field is the most
   common and contains a short string identifying the topic of the
   message.  When used in a reply, the field body MAY start with the
   string "Re: " (from the Latin "res", in the matter of) followed by
   the contents of the "Subject:" field body of the original message.

->WONTFIX

(And yes, the robustness principle applies.)