284836 - reply excludes text following signature in original email

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 201581

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Running Mozilla 1.8b
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b) Gecko/20050217

I have set mozilla to quote the entire original message when I reply to it.
The text is quoted with lines that begin with >, and my text starts below
the quoted text.

Normally, when I reply to a message, the entire original message appears 
quoted in the composition window, including lines that were quoted (began 
with >) in the original.

But recently I have received a simple plain text email messasge that contains
some quoted text (lines that begin with >).  When I reply to this particular
message, the composer window comes up with only some of the lines from the
original message quoted in it.  The lines that were quoted in the original 
message do not appear in the composition window at all.  

How to reproduce:
1 view this email
2 click Reply
3. See composition window that contains only part of original message.

Desired result:  entire original message appears quoted in composition window.
Actual Result: only unquoted lines in original message appear quoted in 
composition window.
Reproducible:  100%, every time I attempt to reply to this message.

The particular email message that experiences this problem contains some
sensitive information, so I am reluctant to attach it to this bug.  
But I am willing to send it privately to any assignee of this bug who 
will work on it.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Could this have anything to do with a signature part way thru the message?
For example:

  message text message text message text
  --
  sig of sender
  > quoted text quoted text quoted text

If so, what are you seeing is expected, if not entirely desirable.
If not, go ahead and forward the message to me (as an attachment, of course) and 
I'll look into it.

Comment 2

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

In reply to comment 1,
Yes, that is what I'm seeing.  
The missing quoted lines all come after a "signature".
The writer in question is a "top poster" (although this is email).

I think the email to which I was replying was composed by mozilla
or tbird.  I see that mozilla gives the user the option to start
the reply above the quote, and place the signature above the quote.

I guess you're saying that mozilla intentionally discards quoted
lines that come after the signature.  I'll bet the writer of that
message didn't know that his preferences for order of the parts 
of a reply would have this effect.  I certainly didn't.  :/

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #2)
> The missing quoted lines all come after a "signature".
> The writer in question is a "top poster" (although this is email).
> 
> I think the email to which I was replying was composed by mozilla
> or tbird.  I see that mozilla gives the user the option to start
> the reply above the quote, and place the signature above the quote.

Mozilla does give that option -- however, if you try it out, you'll see that 
Mozilla does *not* insert the sig separator before the signature when it 
composes the mail that way, exactly to avoid this kind of problem.  When quoting 
such a message, the sig is included in the quote.

If the problem mail was indeed composed on Mozilla, perhaps the user cut-and- 
pasted the sig from the bottom of the message to before the quote.

You'll also note that in the second part of that preference -- "place my 
signature" -- the option "below the quote" is *recommended*.  This is why.
(Beware of bug 277187.)


> I guess you're saying that mozilla intentionally discards quoted
> lines that come after the signature.

Mozilla doesn't do anything to detect where a signature ends -- as far as it's 
concerned, it's *all* signature (bug 54570).  With plain text mail, and with the 
unfortunate tendency of some people to actually want a kitchen sink in their 
sig, it's an intractible problem.  At least Mozilla shows all the "sig" text in 
grey, so you can tell what will or won't be quoted.

Comment 4

[Jean-Marc Desperrier]

So sorry Nelson, but it's invalid. 
Mozilla is acting fully according to the specs here.
You can not mix Outlook style "top posting/full quoting" with the "-- "
convention for signature.

I can just tell you that it's not the only software that acts this way, and that
several people will be annoyed by a message formatted in this manner.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

A workaround is the hidden preference mail.strip_sig_on_reply set to false, provided by bug 201581