273561 - Need option to disable auto-detect for outgoing HTML mail

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[Paul Kramer]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113

When I tell Mozilla to use HTML to compose email, I get the HTML composer when
writing emails.  But if I do not use any HTML constructs when composing the
email, it "auto-detects" and sends plain-text instead.  I can manually force it
to use HTML, but I have to do it every time I write an email by using
Options->Format->Rich Text Only.

I would like to configure Mozilla Mail to always send HTML, even if I only typed
plain-text.  The auto-detection is confusing because it will wrap my message if
I do not use any HTML constructs.  If I do use HTML constructs, it will not wrap
my message.  This violates the basic "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" assumption
that all mail composers should follow.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set Mozilla for HTML mail
2. Compose a message with just a simple line of text
3. Send the message

Actual Results:  
The message is sent as text/plain

Expected Results:  
The message should be sent as html since I told Mozilla to use html by default.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

The argument against this request is that your mail recipient may not be using a 
client that can deal with HTML, and it's considered unfriendly to force them to 
read HTML source.

partial workaround: If you list your recipient (*all* of them, if sending to 
several) in your address book with "prefers to receive ... HTML" then the 
message will not be converted to plain text.  Similarly, if any recipient is 
listed as "prefers... plain" the message will be converted to plain text even if 
it contains formatting.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 285422 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Xavier Padullés]

I was who reported de 285422 bug. I think that it's not exatly the same problem.
I have choosen "send always in html" but thunderbird always convert to plain-text.
I've checked that de receiver is not marked with "prefer to receive plain-text"
I've open de prefs.js file and seen that the
user_pref("mail.default_html_action", 2) option change every time I change it in
thunderbird, but TB ignores this when composing.

Sorry if I didn't wrote the exact name of the options, but I have a catalan version.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(response to comment 3 in bug 285422 comment 2)

Comment 5

[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 6

[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.