187156 - Default priority for outgoing messages should be Normal, not none

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

The default priority for outgoing mail messages should be "Normal", or
"X-Priority: 3".   Currently Mozilla and Netscape only apply a priority to
outgoing mail messages if it is changed to something other than Normal.  If the
priority is not changed, rather than using Normal priority for the message, no
priority header is used.

Comment 1

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Re Description:

I would think that the current behaviour is fine:
assuming blank/none = default = 'Normal'.

Why do you think that it is needed/important to add 'Normal' Priority explicitly ?

Comment 2

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Equivalency to other programs.  Outlook, for example, uses Normal priority for
all outgoing messages unless changed.   No priority does equal "default" which
is "normal", but normal should be defined.  This seems to be standard on most
other programs.   The current behavior is not that 'no priority selected' equals
"normal" but instead that there is no message priority.  

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

is there a spec that says how it should work?
does it cause a problem for any email clients?

Comment 4

[Karsten Düsterloh]

X-Priority is a non-standard header, introduced by Eudora. It's mentioned in the proposed update to RFC 2076, draft-palme-mailext-headers-08.txt[1]. The default value is 3/normal, so any mail without that header is supposed to have normal priority. There's no use in explicitly setting this, albeit we have to understand it on incoming mail.

[1] http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/ietf/mail-headers/mail-headers.html