Closed Bug 201581 Opened 21 years ago Closed 10 years ago

Top-signature results in body being deleted. Option to not strip sigs on reply

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

enhancement
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED FIXED
Thunderbird 29.0

People

(Reporter: karl.palsson, Assigned: mkmelin)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

(Whiteboard: [option is mail.strip_sig_on_reply])

Attachments

(1 file, 2 obsolete files)

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

When replying to a message that had the signature added at the top, mozilla
strips out the sig and everything to the end of the mail.  For instance, when an
Outlook user sends me a mail that goes...

body
-- 
sig

code he has sent out for review
...

And I reply to it to add my comments inline with his code, I find that the code
has been stripped out as it was assumed to be part of the signature.  jihad
against top-posting aside, which would feature me making midnight raids on my
associates computers and changing their preferences on them, I have no way
around this.  I would like a preference to not strip sigs at all.

See Bug #62429 comment #77.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Get mail from an "improper" MUA
2.Reply to said mail
3.

Actual Results:  
everything from "-- " to EOF is removed, as designed

Expected Results:  
I would like this not to happen.
Severity: normal → enhancement

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 54570 ***
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 21 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
I don't feel that this is a duplicate of 54570.  54570 refers to not being able
to identify the end of the sig, but makes no mention whatsoever of offering an
option to simply never strip sigs/never highlight sigs.  54570 was one of the
bugs I looked at in depth before filing this bug.
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
Resolution: DUPLICATE → ---
I can confirm this behavior, has happened to me while replying a business email.
There should be one option in the Preferences to disable this feature.

Marcos.
I think there should be an option, in "Edit -> Mail & Newsgroups Account
Settings, "youraccount" -> Composition & Addressing", something like this:

/--Composition---------------------------------------------------------\
!                                                                       !
!                                                                       !
!  [x] Compose messages in HTML format                                  !
!                                                                       !
!                                                                       !
!  [x] Automatically quote the original message when replying           !
!        (other nested options...)                                      !
!                                                                       !
!  [x] Enable automatic signature detection and removal when replying   !
!                                                                       !
\-----------------------------------------------------------------------/

Marcos.
*** Bug 204558 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 241959 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Valid enhancement request.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
OS: Windows 2000 → All
Hardware: PC → All
Summary: RFE: top-signature results in body being deleted. Option to not strip sigs → Top-signature results in body being deleted. Option to not strip sigs
*** Bug 262207 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Product: MailNews → Core
*** Bug 216678 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 227839 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is the simplest solution to the problem - it adds a checkbox into the
General tab of the Composition preferences pane labelled "Snip signature (and
subsequent quoted messages) when replying", backed by a boolean mail.snip_sig
preference.  This is turned on by default.  It does just what it says on the
tin, by tweaking the MIMEInlineTextPlain* parsers' behaviour appropriately.
Attachment #192386 - Flags: review?(mscott)
*** Bug 310213 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 293770 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 277442 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The preference from the proposed patch probably should be expanded to be identity-specific, like the rest of the options on the Composition & Addressing page.
Blocks: 142439
*** Bug 327008 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #11)
> Created an attachment (id=192386) [edit]
> adds a mail.snip_sig boolean preference for implementing this behaviour
> 
> This is the simplest solution to the problem - it adds a checkbox into the
> General tab of the Composition preferences pane labelled "Snip signature (and
> subsequent quoted messages) when replying", backed by a boolean mail.snip_sig
> preference.  This is turned on by default.  It does just what it says on the
> tin, by tweaking the MIMEInlineTextPlain* parsers' behaviour appropriately.

This mail.snip_sig boolean preference would solve my problem, too. (See my Bug 327008, moved to this bug in Comment 16. It was requested in mid-2003; can it be incorporated into the SeaMonkey nightlies?
Hi guys,

I still encounter the problem on 1.5.0.4 (20060516); the issue makes forwarded messages for which there is a reply below the signature cut off when replying.

The option would be nice indeed.
Assignee: ducarroz → nobody
QA Contact: esther → composition
Problem is still there in 2.0.0.4.

I know, it`s a very very old bug, but does nobody want to fix it? :-(
What needs to be done to get Matthew Hodgson's patch in shape to be accepted?  Are changes necessary?  If so, what changes?
Product: Core → MailNews Core
Attachment #192386 - Flags: review?(mscott)
Comment on attachment 192386 [details] [diff] [review]
adds a mail.snip_sig boolean preference for implementing this behaviour

Paul, time for someone to take over the patch (Matthew appears to be gone.) clearing old review request

steps needed are check that patch still applies, test it, then request review. 

reference http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/review.html and
                http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/review-mail.html
Attached image Other kind of same bug (obsolete) —
I stay with same problem but with other e-mail configured by main mail.
Look the image to have more detail of bug.
if somebody to know how to fix, please send te message.

Thank´s
Will this new feature be implemented?  Any idea when?

Thanks.
This is one of the greatest pains EVER! I personally don't use Thunderbird, but I send emails to others with another email program that puts the delimiter on top of my signature and the quote of the original message below the signature. Don't anyone tell me that I shouldn't use this "top posting", this is the de facto standard in almost all corporate environments!
Now whenever someone answers my emails using Thunderbird, their quote of my message gets removed together with my signature.

At the very least it should be possible to implement something like "max length of signature to remove": Noone has signatures that are a hundred lines long, so why does my whole message get removed?

I can't believe this ticket is open since 2003! You know what this causes:
- companies are less likely to switch to Thunderbird
- people will stop using the signature delimiter (as one can see in #142439)

And no, noone will stop using top posting because of this. The fight against top posting is over, it was lost long ago, let's face it. One of the reasons being that email programs haven't been able to allow for quick switching to previous messages in the same conversation that are stored in a different folder, e.g. from Inpox to Sent and back.
> I send emails to others with another email program that puts the delimiter on
> top of my signature and the quote of the original message below the signature.

Please fix it, what you send out is simply *invalid*.
At the very least, please don't use "-- " as sig delimiter, but disable the delimiter or use "---" or whatever. Thunderbird only reacts to "-- ", which has special meaning.
It's not my fault that Thunderbird cuts off everything without leaving the user a choice.
I will continue to delimit my signature this way, as other email programs are able to handle it, and, for example, show everything below this delimiter in a different color/small text etc.
I will also continue to quote the full previous email below, as that's just what's standard today.
> It's not my fault

In fact, it is. Everything below "-- " is the signature, by definition.
If you denote the quote as signature, that *is* your fault.

> I will continue to delimit my signature this way

OK, your choice. *shrug*

Only effect is that the person replying to you doesn't quote your text.
This attitude is exactly the problem with this ticket: Some people prefer telling others how they should write their emails instead of fixing this issue. They don't realize Thunderbird users have no control over how other people (and daemons) send their email.

My signature is below "-- ". And the previous email is at the very end of my email. Take a look at how email is sent in most corporations these days: Exactly this way:

- greeting
- email text
- signature 
- original message text

The problem is that Thunderbird is unable to handle this structure, insisting that people should put their signature below the original message text or write there message text in between the quote. Guys, you have to face reality, that's not gonna happen!
I subscribed to this bug report a long time ago. We have the same problem here. Regularly users complain about that issue and rail against TB, because before we introduced TB, they never had this problem.

The real problem is, that TB doesn't bring up users how to write their emails. They just complain and try to avoid TB (many here switched back to the webmailer).

Also TB automatically adds "-- " before the signature. I can't just write e.g. "---" to my signature textfile to workaround this behavior.
> Also TB automatically adds "-- " before the signature.

But it also doesn't have this problem of quoting after the signature.
Generally, mailers which implement "-- " also pay attention not to run into this problem - by care or experience.
Well, there are mailers out there that let users freely configure where to put text, quote, signature, etc. 
Also, nothing prevents users to configure a signature that starts with "-- " in Outlook or even on the iPhone. 

You just have to accept the fact that Thunderbird can't control incoming mail. So why handicap TB users by not allowing them to reply without anything being deleted from the quote/orignal message?
> nothing prevents users to configure a signature that starts with "-- "

Right. But then you are responsible yourself. If you deliberately trigger this problem, it's your problem.

> TB users ... not allowing them to reply

FYI, the workaround is to select the text manually. When you then click reply, it will quote what you selected.
Whiteboard: workaround: select text before reply
Whiteboard: workaround: select text before reply → Bug in sender, msg is invalid. Workaround: select text before reply.
So we have to wait 8 more years until someone fixes this issue of badly brought up TB users?
> Right. But then you are responsible yourself. If you deliberately trigger this problem, it's your problem.

As I said: The Thunderbird user has no control over what email he receives. It is his problem, but he can't change anything about it. That's why Thunderbird needs to get this fixed.
And from a different POV: What is this ****, forcing users to put "-- " on top of their signature or cutting quotes from replies without giving the user a choice to disable this? Maybe I WANT the to include signatures in my quotes? I thought the philosophy of TB was a bit more open.

> FYI, the workaround is to select the text manually. When you then click reply, it will quote what you selected.

Are you kidding me? I'm not gonna select the text manually each time I answer, noone is gonna do that. This needs to be fixed, period.
>> FYI, the workaround is to select the text manually.
>> When you then click reply, it will quote what you selected.
>
> Are you kidding me? I'm not gonna select the text manually each
> time I answer, noone is gonna do that.

I agree. No user wants to live with an endless workaround. Software should assist users and not be a pain of workarounds that tries to push users into rules they don't want to accept.

What kind of problem would it be, to have a checkbox with two options: Cut off after "-- " or don't. Then the user can easily decide.
> Software should assist users

And TB does. Signatures are not supposed to be quoted. The user needs to manually remove them, which is annoying work. The software assists them in removing clearly marked signatures automatically.

Per definition, everything following "-- " is a signature. There is no such thing as "signature ends here". There's also no way for us to know where the signature ends. Some signatures are long, and they in particular need to be cut. In fact, long sigs are common, for example these dreaded long disclaimers. Signatures also often contain ASCII-art with all kinds of special characters. So a heuristic *cannot* work.

1. This bug is not properly fixable. It's a bug in the sender. It *must* be fixed by the sender. The email sent is simply invalid.
2. It's not a big problem for the TB user, because he can quote the email he replies to. Just the quote of the quote is cut.
3. There is a workaround, in case it is actually important. In comparison to the user having to manually remove signatures, a simple Ctrl-A (or mouse select) before hitting reply is actually simpler.
Also, it's trivial to fix in the sender, and very hard to fix in Thunderbird, even if a good heuristic was possible, which I claim it's not.
> The software assists them in removing clearly marked signatures automatically.

Actually, this bug specifically asks for an option to disable this TB feature.
That we can do, with a pref in about:config.
No complex heuristic. Just allow users to disable the cut off so they can have this like in many other programs to. Nothing more.

At least it should be a about:config option, if a checkbox in the GUI isn't wanted.
> That we can do, with a pref in about:config

That's all we're asking for. 

I agree that a change is trivial for the sender, but as the recipient has no control over the sender (especially not all potential senders in the world), it's practically impossible for the Thunderbird user to get to a solution.

And the resulting problem can be severe for anyone involved in the email thread, especially when many people are on CC. As soon as one person triggers this problem, the past communication is cut from all following emails.

A standard user cannot be expected to hit Ctrl-A each time before replying, or to analyze emails for a "-- " and then decide whether to hit Ctrl-A or just reply. People don't do that. It's just the way users are nowadays. There are just a handful of people care at all.
Ben, it would be great if there would be a option in about:config. This would assist users who really have a problem with this (regular) TB behaviour.
The open source TB is especially in a startup environment as I am working a great mail client. But this issue disqualifies TB for lots of users for business purposes.
Implementation of this option would help me and my colleagues a lot. It looks like an interesting discussion has taken place here recently, but what is the result and current status? Will this be implemented?
> Actually, this bug specifically asks for an option to disable this TB feature.
> That we can do, with a pref in about:config.

I think it would be really appreciated by many if this could be implemented in the near future. Is there any chance this can get into the next release?
Right! Please do not gloss over this problem!
>Actually, this bug specifically asks for an option to disable this TB feature.
>That we can do, with a pref in about:config.

@Ben: Apparently this did not get into TB 5. Any plans that this will be addressed in the near future?
A few days ago the legal department of our customer complaining that we cut out the company signature with the legal disclaimer. They insist the full disclaimer must be in every mail immediately following the text block they written.

I tried to find a way to configure TB to prevent signature removal and came across this bug.

I can't understand why it takes so many years to add this options. Clearly since this is a critical issue for my company we apparently need to find a replacement for TB now.

Even if you say "its invalid". Companies have internal rules they need to follow, maybe even because of country laws or regulations they need to conform with. I doubt that saying "its invalid" will impress anyone in this regard.
@Ben: Es geht hier doch nicht ums Prinzip, vom Prinzip her gebe ich dir sogar recht! Die Welt da draußen kümmert sich nur leider nicht darum, und deshalb brauchen wir diese *Option*. Für jemanden, der im Code drinsteckt, ist das doch schnell implementiert.
I think it doesn't matter if a disclaimer is usless or not. If a company decides to have it, they want to have it. And if the mailer doesn't do what they want, they 'll find an other application that does the job.
Look, if somebody wants to implement this pref, fine. If a company (e.g. GK's company) wants it, they can pay me to do it, but it will cost 4 digits. I don't see why I should do it in my free time, at the moment.
Ben, is there noone else at Mozilla who can spare a few minutes to implement this? From what I know about programming is that all you have to do is take the function that removes the signature and surround it by an IF-condition, like this:

IF [!config_option(keep_sig)]
     strip_signature()
END IF

I would do it myself, but am not familiar with the whole project and code structure, an obstacle that would take much longer to take. But for someone who is already part of the dev team the fix should be doable in less time than we spent discussing here, shouldn't it?
is anything gonna happen here with the new major releases?
************
This is a recurring problem for me at work as well!
Maintaining the thread of discussion is vital... and this bug strips out all the vital information from the email, making an obstacle to work efficiency.

**********
Please, someone there prioritize this!
***********
thanks.
(In reply to carlamc from comment #57)
> ************
> This is a recurring problem for me at work as well!
> Maintaining the thread of discussion is vital... and this bug strips out all
> the vital information from the email, making an obstacle to work efficiency.

Don't set your hopes too high. The developers don't care about business customers, they prefer educating users on how e-mailing is supposed to be done.
P.S.:

(In reply to Ben Bucksch (:BenB) from comment #54)
> I don't see why I should do it in my free time, at the moment.

To make Thunderbird a better product that can be used in corporate environments as well. You are interested in Thunderbird's success, right? Well, this is a huge obstacle to success.

No company in the world will pay you to implement such basic functionality that one simply expects an email program to have. In fact, it's not even seen as implementation of functionality, but rather as REMOVING a behavior (content-stripping) that is simply unacceptable in the way corporate email is done nowadays.
Any chance that the issues will be fixed somewhen?
Does anyone know workaround/extension to solve the issue?
-- 
10 years and 59 comments behind and still there is no option to turn the stripping off :((
My prior report on this was met with suggestion that people should jut 'not use -- above their signature'.

Note: Thunderbird is Automatically adding that atop my signature, NOT by my choice (nor my co-workres).
AND then stripping off everything below it. Totally creating the proplem at both ends.  Both of these are problems... we should be able to choose what delimiter is atop the sig, as well as whether or not to strip sigs in replies.

Why is this not being fixed?
(In reply to carlamc from comment #61)
> My prior report on this was met with suggestion that people should jut 'not
> use -- above their signature'.

I can't teach all people from my address book not to put this "-- " at the top of their replies, cause my great (I really like it) Thunderbird will strip all quote thread below it. All these 60+ comments here are only intresting for Thunderbird users (may be). Users of other mailers just say "Your Thunderbird strange, change it" if I try to expain the problem for them.
(In reply to carlamc from comment #61)
> My prior report on this was met with suggestion that people should jut 'not
> use -- above their signature'.
> 
> Note: Thunderbird is Automatically adding that atop my signature, NOT by my
> choice (nor my co-workres).

This design flaw was reported nine years ago. It is another case of developers trying to force the world into their way of doing email --bottom posting, which I also think is better than top posting. However, I live in the real world where laziness continues to lure most users toward top posting. We have lost this one. Unfortunately, top posting wins. Years ago I quit using Mozilla mail software because of this design flaw. Maybe some young developer can learn from this. Design to the ways and means your users. Changing their habits it not you job.
To all who receive this comment via email, apologies for the bugspam, whcih I hope will be the last for some time in this bug. Actual bug-related comments appear at the end.

While this issue would probably be best (read: expediently) served with an extension, and while, yes, this bug has indeed been open for some time, there remain a couple misconceptions about what Mozilla/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey (or any freely available, open source project) is and what a bug tracker is.

First, it is nobody's paid *job* to triage these issues, assign paid staff to address them, and to release bug fixes for free software. Apparently, this issue hasn't received much attention over the years because, while most everyone contributing here seems to feel this is an urgent/must-have/mission critical/"I'll jump ship to another app" issue, the vast majority of Thunderbird and SeaMonkey Mail users don't.

That said, this is not a discussion forum. I suggest that a more appropriate venue (getsatisfaction.com, MozilllaZine, etc.) be explored for a place to air grievances about the attention (or lack thereof) to this issue or another. Please review https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html .

I am not the topic police (well, this isn't a discussion forum, as I said, so there really does not exist such a position here, to my knowledge). I'm just another volunteer, who takes time away from paying work and family obligations to either contribute feedback and testing or actual coding from time to time, to try to enhance the project. I'm also on the cc list for this bug, and have been reading the comments posted today - the first in a year, leading me to wonder just how truly important this is.

If this *is* a mission-critical issue for a large enterprise, I might suggest hiring someone fluent in Javascript and XUL to script an extension (shouldn't be a major cost factor, especially by comparison to the licensing cost of a commercial email client). Then, the Enterprise will have total control over the design, implementation, and schedule of the project.

In the interim, as I mentioned, this really is not the appropriate venue for a discussion of why this hasn't been fixed.

Now, to the bug:

I recommend closing this as WONTFIX. It can easily be handled with an extension which would implement the changes set forth in Matthew's Attachment #192386 [details] [diff] and Mike's Comment #15, to make it multiple-identity-aware. Several good coders are around who do some marvelous things with message formatting and signatures. Perhaps approaching one of them - nicely - might glean the desired result.

Cheers, all, and many happy returns of the season.
Whiteboard: Bug in sender, msg is invalid. Workaround: select text before reply. → Bug in sender, msg is invalid. Workaround: select text (Ctrl-A) before reply. See comment 40.
Whiteboard: Bug in sender, msg is invalid. Workaround: select text (Ctrl-A) before reply. See comment 40. → Bug in sender, msg is invalid. Workaround: select text (Ctrl-A) before reply. See comment 40-42.
Whiteboard: Bug in sender, msg is invalid. Workaround: select text (Ctrl-A) before reply. See comment 40-42. → Bug in sender, msg is invalid. Workaround: select text (Ctrl-A) before reply.
Ben, thanks a lot!
I just overlooked your workaround with Ctrl+A in the middle of so long thread.
(In reply to carlamc from comment #61)
> My prior report on this was met with suggestion that people should jut 'not
> use -- above their signature'.

Wait, wait ....   somebody seriously suggested "don't use the documented RFC standard" as a workaround....?
Unfortunately I am not able to write the required code. But I am willing to pay somebody up to 300 CHF who can fix this REALLY big problem. We are a small company and really need this feature in TB.
My first comment on bugzilla, so forgive me if this is not the right forum for my comment.

I've noticed in several bugs, including this one, a violent response to people who top-post.  All attempts to approach related bugs seem to result in an immediate call to stop top posting.  I wanted to give an explicit use case to show that this is not a solution.  Let's say I receive the following email:

Hey, I'm a top poster!  Shame on me
-- 
Bob

Adam wrote:
> Hey Bob, this is Adam.  I've got some really useful context for future readers of this email chain
> I'm being psychic here, and assuming Bob's email reader might strip
> out my signature, so if you don't see a quoted signature below this line
> don't freak out.  It doesn't matter for this example.

I want to comment on this, so I hit reply.  Lets pretend I'm a good little bottom reply newsgroupee.  Even so, Thunderbird 17.0.6 offers me the following  reply:

Bob wrote:
> Hey, I'm a top poster!  Shame on me

{my insert cursor is here}
-- 
 MySignature

In this example, I am doing exactly what the signature-stripping advocates want me to do.  I'm bottom replying.  However, because someone besides myself top posted with a signature delimiter, my reply is no longer what I expect.  I have no reason to expect Thunderbird to provide this behavior unless I am aware of the exact rules for signatures AND I choose to scan the entire email just to see if someone besides myself "broke the rules."

This of course, assumes that there is a rule in the first place, which discussion on this ticket and others makes me highly question.

Personally, I am upvoting this issue.  I now have to weigh ALL the great features against TB against a highly unintuitive design that depends on me hitting ctrl-a before replying every time, or fear accidentally chopping off content.
(In reply to Bob Kerstetter from comment #63)
> I live in the real world where laziness continues to lure most users toward top
> posting.

I'd go a step further - we live in the real world where it's not efficient to have to scroll all the way to the bottom of a long email thread (which I was probably already in copy of anyway) but it is useful to have the thread there in case I need to quickly refresh my memory.

Perhaps we should fire our 'benevolent dictators' and fork Thunderbird ... ;)
apparently it's not just "-- " that triggers it. i had a message whose headers ended with:

MIME-Version:1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
 type="application/smil";
 boundary="__CONTENT_64564_PART_BOUNDARY__33243242__"

--__CONTENT_64564_PART_BOUNDARY__33243242__
Content-Type: text/plain;
 charset=us-ascii
Content-ID: <0>
Content-Disposition: attachment;
 filename="text_0.txt"
Content-Location: text_0.txt 

and since this is before the body of the message, absolutely nothing was quoted. so this seems to have to do with a lot more than just top posting and signatures. you could argue that perhaps the above email was poorly created (incidentially from verizon's online message service), but it illustrates the fact that unexpected things WILL happen.

that being said, there's an easy solution: some "hidden" settings in about:config. have a boolean to turn the functionality off and on and a string to keep track of the delimiter. easy, no?
(In reply to aj from comment #69)
> (In reply to Bob Kerstetter from comment #63)
> > I live in the real world where laziness continues to lure most users toward top
> > posting.
> 
> I'd go a step further - we live in the real world where it's not efficient
> to have to scroll all the way to the bottom of a long email thread (which I
> was probably already in copy of anyway) but it is useful to have the thread
> there in case I need to quickly refresh my memory.
> 
> Perhaps we should fire our 'benevolent dictators' and fork Thunderbird ... ;)

Actually there is a fork, a little more vision and customer driven : postbox-inc.com
Indeed, governance of end-user products by developers doesn't work
Mozilla needs a better user driven / market driven governance. We could just fork the feature request system :-)
Unfortunately Postbox isn't a fork in the sense I meant. :( Not that I would mind paying but I want unfettered access to TBs add-ons and I would prefer open source.
(In reply to Walter Lapchynski from comment #70)
> that being said, there's an easy solution: some "hidden" settings in
> about:config. have a boolean to turn the functionality off and on and a
> string to keep track of the delimiter. easy, no?

I hope this isn't a stupid question but where are these 'hidden' settings?
(In reply to aj from comment #73)
> (In reply to Walter Lapchynski from comment #70)
> > that being said, there's an easy solution: some "hidden" settings in
> > about:config. have a boolean to turn the functionality off and on and a
> > string to keep track of the delimiter. easy, no?
> 
> I hope this isn't a stupid question but where are these 'hidden' settings?

Hidden settings are settings with no corresponding UI in "Edit → Preferences" (or "Tools → Options"); they can only be accessed via the browser's "about:config" page, or Thunderbird's "Config Editor" (which can be reached via a button in the "Advanced" preferences dialog). The most hidden of hidden settings don't even have a default value; to set them the first time, you must know the exact spelling of their name, their type, the value you need to set to get the effect you want, and then use "Right-click → New" in about:config or in the Config Editor.
(In reply to Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec] from comment #74)
> Hidden settings are settings with no corresponding UI in "Edit →

Sorry - I misunderstood your original comment. I thought you were saying that these settings already existed.
Attached patch proposed fixSplinter Review
This adds a hidden pref to keep the signature. 
I don't think it needs to be per-identity (and that would be harder).

For thunderbird I'd certainly be in favor of later having keep signature be the default. Removing it is just unexpected behavior for most people, and feels unjustified just to save some space or whatever, given the many problems it can cause.
Assignee: nobody → mkmelin+mozilla
Attachment #192386 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #384683 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Attachment #8344333 - Flags: review?(squibblyflabbetydoo)
Comment on attachment 8344333 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

2 NITs:
1. Please keep the double-line breaks, they are there to separate larger code parts (than the single linebreaks)
2. Please keep the |else|, it is there to make the logic clearer. Otherwise, the |return| inside the |if| block is easy to miss.
3. I didn't review the test cases.

Otherwise r+ from me, author of this code.
Attachment #8344333 - Flags: review?(squibblyflabbetydoo) → review+
> For thunderbird I'd certainly be in favor of later having keep signature be the default.
> Removing it is just unexpected behavior for most people

It is almost never appropriate to quote a signature. Having sigatures quoted is very confusing and just noise.

Besides, it's required by the "Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval" to remove signatures. Most of these rules are also good net behaviour for email. I am proud of Thunderbird following these and being a good netizen. I don't want to water this down. I don't want 

I *do* think that it's good to have a pref. As long as it's default is to remove signatures.

In the patch, the default is true, so the patch is perfect. Thank you for the patch!
> "Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval"

xref bug 12699
We've tried hard to make Thunderbird a good netizen.
(In reply to Ben Bucksch (:BenB) from comment #77)
> 2. Please keep the |else|, it is there to make the logic clearer. Otherwise,

See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Developer_Guide/Coding_Style item #1
(granted in this case indention level is not affected, but it's still clearer to always just follow the guide)
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/c8a8ba69b2be -> FIXED

So to preserve signatures on reply, set mail.strip_sig_on_reply to false
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 21 years ago10 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Summary: Top-signature results in body being deleted. Option to not strip sigs → Top-signature results in body being deleted. Option to not strip sigs on reply
Whiteboard: Bug in sender, msg is invalid. Workaround: select text (Ctrl-A) before reply. → [option is mail.strip_sig_on_reply]
Target Milestone: --- → Thunderbird 29.0
Flags: in-testsuite+
Thanks, Magnus!
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