271327 - RSS articles have "From:" in header - how should reply and other actions behave?

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(MailNews Core :: Feed Reader, defect)

Description

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

I noticed that while reading an RSS article that it has a "from" header, based
on the title of the feed.

the problem I noticed is that this allows the same "from" actions that are also
seen for mail and news accounts. should these behaviors be disabled for RSS
articles?

for example:

1. subscribe to any feed, say, http://www.mozillazine.org/atom.xml

2. click to view any of the articles in the feed.

3. bring up the context menu for the link after the "From" header. eg, for the
sample feed in step 1, the link will say "mozillaZine.org" --here's what happens
with the resulting commands:

a. Add to Address Book - attempts to add "mozillaZine.org" as an email address
in a new AB entry dialog.

b. Compose Email To - brings up a mail compose window addressed to "mozillaZine.org"

c. Copy Email Address - just copies "mozillaZine.org" to the clipboard.

d. Create Filter from Message - opens the Filter Rules dialog with "sender is
mozillaZine.org" as the rule.

none of these make any sense --unless there's a particular scenario I'm not
remembering...

4. in addition, the Reply and Reply All buttons might also need disabling as
they make a compose window appear addressed to "mozillaZine.org"

Comment 1

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

nominating for 1.0 --would it be possible to make the "from" content a non-link,
and also disable the Reply and Reply All commands?

Comment 2

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

alternatively, would it be possible for the "from" link to the main (top-level)
page? basically act the same as the "website" link, but point to the top-level
page rather than the specific entry page.

Comment 3

[Scott MacGregor]

too late for this now.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Some feeds have a From: showing an actual email address.

(Incidentally, if I "reply" to one of these, the To: field in the composition is 
left blank.)

Comment 5

[Brian Duff]

The RSS 2.0 standard has the <item>/<author> element as an email address. TBird
ought to really treat it as such if it is one (e.g. it contains an @). It's
irksome right now when using feeds that have <item><author> properly set to an
email address because Reply etc. do not work at all (as a previous person
mentioned, you end up with a blank To: line).

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss#hrelementsOfLtitemgt

Comment 6

[Corinne Bordelon]

mscott -> are you planning on fixing this for 1.1? thx.

Comment 7

[Scott MacGregor]

not a blocker.

Comment 9

[alta88]

i don't see the problem here.  as mentioned, per rss2.0 spec - atom is more specific, <author> is supposed to be an email.  whether it is valid (is [e-mail] valid?) is not up to tb to determine, but the user.  therefore all options that assume it is valid should remain.  for example, if the published author is "Joe Blogger", that may still be useful to add to an addressbook for allow remote content purposes or some other user determined reason.

also, replying populates the From value in the To: field in latest versions.