1809669 - When I go out of my way to shift+click "Reply" to get the HTML composer, send a HTML mail always

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Ellie]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/109.0

Steps to reproduce:

When I go out of my way to shift+click "Reply" to get the HTML composer, send a HTML mail always, even when Composition > Sending Format is set to "Only Plain Text". As a side note, the HTML formatting to plain text conversion seems kind of bad and for me occasionally just removed (essential) spacing between word or shows separate formatting with these asterisks and slashes for two sentence fragments where it looked the same in the HTML editor. This made this unexpected behavior slightly more aggravating.

1. Set Composition > Sending Format to "Only Plain Text"
2. Shift+Click "Reply" on an email to specifically, for this one time, write a formatted email
3. Send it and expect to send specifically, this one time, an e-mail with formatting properly and fully retained (!= plain text conversion)

Actual results:

It gets converted to plain text anyway, and kind of badly

Expected results:

IMHO it should work like this: "Automatic" -> you get a HTML composer by default, response gets sent as plain text anyway if no formatting, otherwise HTML with plain text fallback. "Both HTML and plain text" -> you get a HTML composer, always sends HTML with plain text format. "Only HTML" -> you get a HTML composer, always send HTML only. "Only Plain Text" -> you get a plain text composer and always sends plain text from that one, HOWEVER if I force a HTML composer it should behave like "Automatic" instead (otherwise why would I try to force formatting??).

Also, the HTML to plain text conversion should be better. Especially when I see a line break or spacing in the HTML, that needs to remain in the final plain text.

Comment 1

[Ellie]

After some more thinking, my proposed change could also be considered surprising and I think the problem is the "Sending Format" settings aren't just what is useful to most users, and it's a confusing design. I think most users don't think primarily about how an e-mail is CONVERTED after sending, they think about what they want to COMPOSE. I think my change should still be applied but along with changing the "Sending Format" as follows:

"Sending Format" rename to -> "Composition Format"

"With Formatting": "Compose with complex formatting available, using the HTML composer.". Offer a sub options list offering "Send Format", with "Automatic" -> "If the message you write doesn't end up using any formatting, send it as Plain Text, otherwise send it as HTML with a Plain Text fallback.", "Combined Format" -> "Compose with complex formatting available, using the HTML composer. Always send as HTML with a Plain Text fallback.", and "HTML Only" -> "Compose with complex formatting available, using the HTML composer. Send as HTML only, with no Plain Text fallback." This unifies the previous first three options.

"No Formatting": "Compose without any formatting and send as plain text." This corresponds to the previous fourth option, "Only Plain Text".

Because then, if I pick "No Formatting" it's obvious if I force to suddenly use a composer with HTML formatting anyway which obviously circumvents that option, I'm trying to do something different.

While with the current option design, if I have "Only Plain Text" set, what's even my intent when I pick the HTML formatter anyway? Have it all much worse represented in text than I could do manually? Lazily have a HTML I paste auto-convert when I could just paste it in text mode too without the formatting? Or actually send it as HTML this one time? Really extremely ambiguous in my opinion, and that would be solved by focusing the options primarily on the default composer choice and the send format only secondarily.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

If you compose in the plain text composer, it will always be sent as plain text only. (What else could it send?)
When you want it to send html for the html composer, choose an appropriate setting under Sending Format. You chose the one you should not.
Per message, you can also use Options | Sending format.