1793849 - The 'prefers to receive messages formatted as' option has disappeared

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[[:nickname]JN]

Attachment: AllFieldsForAnEntry.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:105.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/105.0

Steps to reproduce:

On Windows (Thunderbird 102.3.1) and on Linux (Thunderbird 102.2.2) the 'prefers to receive messages formatted as' option, in the address book, appears simply to have disappeared!

Actual results:

I opened the address book and examined the fields for a few addresses.

Expected results:

I should have found the 'prefers to receive messages formatted as' option - which is a rather important option.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Recipient centric options have been removed in bug 1727493. This is per design.

Comment 2

[[:nickname]JN]

I skimmed the long webpage to which you, Magnus, directed me. I am left unclear about what the options are for someone who wants or needs to send mail to people - and those people include many _developers - who very much prefer to to receive their emails in plain text.

Is such a user - someone who needs to email such people - to make some approximation to what they want via either (1) the about:config preference mail.default_html_action preference and/or (2) Compose -> Options -> Sending Format?

Also: I tend to read the Thunderbird changelogs. I did not notice this change - the removal of a constant but per-user sending format option - described in any changelog.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

In the default configuration, if you don't add fancy styling etc, Thunderbird sends the message as plain text.
To force control how a particular mail will be sent, yes, Compose -> Options -> Sending Format.
mail.default_html_action determines what format will automatically be applied, in case HTML would be required to preserve the message content as written when sending.

Comment 4

[[:nickname]JN]

Thank you for the information.

The following remains the case. The removal of functionality ought to have been in the changelog. Also, the point about Compose -> Options -> Sending Format, and documentation of the relevant about:config preference(s), ought to be made easy for people to find.