192262 - Attachment UI should allow choosing of MIME type and file description

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[Michael T. Babcock]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130

I would like to be able to specify the MIME type of an attachment when attaching
it, or at least review what MIME type was chosen for a file.

Also (unless this should be a seperate bug), providing a file description for
the file (as MUTT does) would be appreciated in the same fashion.

Also (again, same caveat), providing a filename for the file to the remote user
(this would simply mean changing the name in the Filename: specification for the
attachment) allowing me to attach a file like foobar12341232.tif and call it
'yourfaximage.tif' for the receiving user's sake.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Attach a file with an unknown extension to an E-mail in Composer.
Actual Results:  
File is attached with unknown (application/binary / text/plain?) MIME type
(haven't checked yet).

Expected Results:  
The attachment file selection window or the attachments list window should allow
me to choose each of the options above (mime type, file name, file description)
with appropriate defaults filled in.

Mime type should be pre-set to the OS-specified type unless unknown.
File name and description should be the filename of the local file by default.

Possibly related to bug 153930 -- that bug contains information on this issue at
the very least.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This would be _very_ useful in some cases...  I know it's geeky, and no I can't
think of a good UI for this, but....

Comment 2

[Michael T. Babcock]

UI suggestion:

/--------------------------------------\
| ... file selection window as now ... |
|-----------------------------------^--|
|  Attach file with name: [__________] |
| Brief file description: [__________] |
|     MIME type for file: [__________] |
\--------------------------------------/

... where that '^' is the up-arrow that closes the rest of the window and
becomes a 'v' to open it again.  Defaults filled in as above.  The list of mime
types known by the OS should be provided, but freetext should be allowed as well
(restricted to "\w[\w_-.\d]*/\w[\w_-.\d]*" <-- untested regex).  The OS-chosen
MIME type shouldbe marked as '(detected)' to the right of its name;

----------------------------------
|application/ms-word (detected)|^|
|application/x-word-document   | |
|------------------------------|v|

Comment 3

[Jungshik Shin]

I also think these features (description, filename , mime type spec.) are useful.
Pine also lets users to add the description. 

> The OS-chosen MIME type shouldbe marked as '(detected)' to the right of its name
 
  The MIME type box should be pre-filled with the detected value. 
  

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

xref bug 66915 -- the Content-Disposition of the attachment should be settable 
as well.

Rather than make these settings part of the File Attachment dialog, I would add 
a Properties item to the attachment's context menu, which would bring up a small 
dialog with these settings.  The dialog should also display the attachment's 
size (bug 195702) and full original pathname.

I think a better display of the attachments within the compose window (with 
quick access to the size and MIME type, at least) would be nice as well, but 
that's another bug.

(Shouldn't this bug's component be Compose rather than Attachments?)

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

See also bug 72116 -- if this UI is implemented, having the ability to specify a 
charset for text/* attachments would be useful as well.

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 336204 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***