216637 - When replying to a replied message, no more 'Re:' is added

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[:aceman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)
Build Identifier: Mozilla 1.3.1

If the subject of a message already contains a 'Re:', when composing a reply,
no more 'Re:' is prepended to it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
If this was done intentionally, please make a (about:config) pref for it.
I don't like adding the 'Re:'s manually. Thanks

Comment 1

[Kai de Leeuw]

This is by design I think. Mozilla Mail detects if there's a "Re:" already, if
it is, don't add it.

Why do you want multiple "Re:"s?

This bug should be marked as INVALID I think.

Comment 2

[Felix Miata]

Current behavior is designed to prevent subject lines like the following: 

Re: Fwd: Re: [kawasaki] Re: [mrccfl] Re: FS: Waverunner

Comment 3

[Oliver Klee]

I agree. Marking Invalid.

Comment 4

[:aceman]

What's wrong with such subjects??? I want them :(
The subject in the example says much more then getting the mail 'Re: 
Waverunner' 10 times, always with different content.
It seems you like loosing data and history.

Can't there be a pref, please?

Comment 5

[Jo Hermans]

See RFC2822 paragraph 3.6.5 ( http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc2822.html ) :

   When used in a reply, the field body MAY start with the
   string "Re: " (from the Latin "res", in the matter of) followed by
   the contents of the "Subject:" field body of the original message.
   If this is done, only one instance of the literal string "Re: " ought
   to be used since use of other strings or more than one instance can
   lead to undesirable consequences.

See also bug 213004

Comment 6

[:aceman]

Thanks for some specifications. But they didn't say adding multiple Re:s is not 
allowed, just not recommended. They didn't provide any example of 
their 'undesirable consequences'.

In my opinion, the mailviewer should not be allowed to parse and analyze the 
subjects. That's not its job, it's the user's. Its job is to add the prefixes 
as the user requested, to save the user from the job of adding them manually. 
The program will never be as smart as the user (hopefully:))

If I get a mail with a Re: and a reply to it, this second level reply should be 
indicated somehow. If you get 1 Re, reply to it, and get back 1 Re (instead of 
3 now), how do you distinguish these 2 messages? Comparing the dates, 
threading... This does not always work or is possible. But you may say this is 
a bad habit of the people not updating the subjects. This may be true but it 
happens. And the subject is ofter unimportant. Just the number of Re:s count.

Anyway, thanks for explanations guys.

I change the severity to enhancement. Maybe somebody will vote for it.

Comment 7

[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
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