199272 - Make Content-Transfer-Encoding selectable by Mail/News account

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(MailNews Core :: MIME, enhancement)

Description

[Oliver Schoett]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

The Content-Transfer-Encoding of new messages currently is selected globally in

   Preferences -> Mail & Newsgroups -> Composition
   Flag "For messages that contain 8-bit characters, use ..."

However, the best encoding typically depends on the server one talks to, and the
conversions it performs.

For example, 8-bit encoding is no good for MS Exchange, because it then encodes
messages in base-64 for transfer.  On the other hand, 8-bit encoding would be
better for News, because most News servers in Germany communicate using 8-bit
protocols, and some MS Newsreaders cannot cope with quoted-printable encoding.
The current single global setting forces one to make a suboptimal decision for
one of these services.

Philosophically, one can argue that content-transfer-encoding is not an
attribute of composition, but of transfer to the servers, which are associated
with Mail/News accounts.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[:aceman]

I would welcome it to be an account specific pref, at least. Not Mail/News 
global option.

Comment 2

[Vidar Tyldum]

Using Mozilla for news and mail is hard without this setting: in Norway we have
speciel characters requiring either 8bit or quotedprintable. Using 8bit in mail
is hard since I use PGP so tign my messages: some servers alter content (convert
it to QP). Using QP solves this but is not popular when posting on news.

I really support this option, or at least let it be possible to override this
per message.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.

Comment 5

[Oliver Schoett]

Seamonkey 1.0 and Thunderbird 1.5 still have only a global option, whereas the best setting may differ according to the server one talks to.  Therefore the flag should be per-account.