30486 - [Feature]Reply/forward to multiple messages in the same message

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Dan Ridley]

As discussed in n.p.m.ui, it would be useful to be able to reply to multiple 
messages simultaneously; or to forward several messages (quoted) 
simultaneously. From the newsgroup:

----------
> Matthew Thomas wrote:
> > Dan Ridley wrote:
> > >...
> > > I'd like to propose also that you should be able to select
> > > multiple messages and reply to them, with the messages getting
> > > quoted in chronological order in your reply. Thus, you'd be able
> > > to select both those messages from Person A and reply to all the
> > > appropriate parts.
> > 
> > There's a big can of worms associated with that idea.
> > 
> > * What would the References:/In-Reply-To: headers look like for such a
> >   message?
> 
> Can't these headers include both of the messages to which one is replying?
> From http://www.sendmail.org/rfc/0822.html#Section4 (4.6.2 and 4.6.3) it
> would appear, to my untrained-at-RFC-reading eye, that these headers can
> contain multiple references.
> 
> > * Related to the above, how on earth would such a message be 
> > shown in a threaded display? It would have multiple parents,
> > whereas threading relies on a message only having a single parent.
> 
> This is a very pertinent question.
> 
> IMHO ideally, it would be shown in both threads, but as only one copy --
> perhaps italicize the subject (Mac alias style) to indicate that the message
> is being referenced in more than one place?
> 
> > * What would the default subject line be for such a message?
> 
> Either "Re: the first message the user selected" or "Re: the chronologically
> earliest of the selected messages," I would think. Any suggestions?
> 
> > * What would Mozilla do if the messages had Reply-To:/Followup: headers
> >   which contradicted each other?
> 
> +------------------------------------------+
> |[] Reply :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::|
> +------------------------------------------+
> | The message(s) to which you are replying |
> | have ambiguous reply-to information.     |
> | To whom do you wish to send the reply?   |
> |                                          |
> | [x] Matthew Thomas                       |
> | [x] [e-mail]               |
> | [ ] Dan Ridley                           |
> |                                          |
> |------------------------------------------|
> | (Skip Addressing) (Cancel) (( Select ))  |
> +------------------------------------------+
=-=
Akkana wrote, 2000-02-March:
> What do other mailers which offer this feature do?  This feature has
> been around for many years in other mailers; these are solvable
> problems, and if we got it wrong, the worst that happens is that the
> user would have to do minor editing on the subject line or other
> headers, which is a lot less work than copy/paste-as-quotation from
> multiple messages.

------------

I can't answer Akkana's question here, as none of the mailers I have available -
- Outlook 2000, Outlook Express 5, Eudora 4.3 -- offer this feature.

Comment 1

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Implementation suggestions ...

Creating a reply to multiple messages
-------------------------------------
* Select multiple messages in the message list, and choose Reply in the usual
  way.

Specifying headers
------------------
* Recipients: The reply inherits all the Reply-To: and Followup: recipients from
  the original messages (or From: and Newsgroup: recipients, where Reply-To: and
  Followup: aren't specified), with duplicates deleted. This is common sense, and
  avoids having to use a dialog to determine the recipients.
* Subject: If the subjects of the messages being replied to are the same
  (ignoring cruft such as `Re:', `Re: ', `RE: ', `Fwd: ', etc), use `Re: x' as
  the Subject line where x is the subject (minus `Re: ' etc) of the original
  messages. Otherwise, use the default `(No subject)' subject line. No matter
  what happens, put the cursor in the Subject field of the message when the
  composition window is opened. This both encourages the user to determine the
  appropriate subject line for a reply to messages which may have different
  subjects, and also -- by acting slightly differently from the normal message
  composition window -- acts as a modal signal that this is a reply to multiple
  messages (in case the user hasn't realized that they had had multiple messages
  selected).

Quoting original messages
-------------------------
* | Sender A wrote:
  | >
  | > [message A]
  |
  | Sender B wrote:
  | >
  | > [message B]
* Multiple original messages should always be presented in chronological order,
  regardless of the sorting order of the messages in the sender's message list.

Showing replies to multiple messages in a threaded list
-------------------------------------------------------
If the threading algorithm determines (from References and In-Reply-To headers) 
that a message belongs in more than one place in a thread (due to being a reply 
to multiple messages):
* Show the message in its first position in the thread (which depends on the
  method of sorting), as a normal message.
* In the other places in the thread where the message belongs, show an `alias' to
  the message -- the headers shown in the message list are in italics.
* Changes of read/unread/flagged/unflagged status made to either the original
  message or any of its aliases are automatically reflected in all the other
  instances of the message in the message list. That way, for example, aliases to
  a message will automatically get marked as read as soon as the original is
  read; so if the user is paging through unread messages only, they will not have
  to page through the multiple-original message more than once.

Comment 2

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

Nice feature and good description/analyse. But I doubt we will have enough time 
to do it for first release.

Comment 3

[Akkana Peck]

Taking the liberty of adding a helpwanted keyword.  If I get some spare time
(ha), I might tackle this some day, but don't let that stop anyone who has time
now and wants to try it!

Comment 4

[Phil Peterson]

P4 per m/n staff mtg today

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Never tried this in Mozilla, but in 4.x, "Quote" quotes the last opened, msg.
So, you can reply to one of the mails, then open the second, go back to the
compositition window and hit "Quote" etc.

Although the "References" header (in contrast to the "In-Reply-To" header)*
seems to allow references to msgs in different threads, I'm not sure, all
software will like this (although It should be able to ignore it). Did you test
4.x rgt this?
What about NNTP? If NNTP doesn't allow a followup to more than one msg at the
same time, I'd drop the idea completely (see below).

IIRC, Lotus Notes can reply and forward (I mainly used the last one) multiple
msgs by selecting them in the thread pane and then hitting reply/forward, but
uses only one of them as reference for the new msg, i.e. for the subject,
recipients etc. I suggest to reply/forward only to the first selected msg and
then act, as if the other msgs were "Quote"d manually (as described above).


* Offtopic: It looks like we generally use "References", where "In-Reply-To"
would be more appropriate. Do we send out "In-Reply-To" as well? I think, we
should. Might we even consider switching to "In-Reply-To" completely (supporting
"References" in send/recieve for legacy purposes only)? Should I file a bug?

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> to the first selected msg

Don't we already have the something like a primary selected item, if more than
one item is selected? If yes, we should use this, and maybe tweak this (i.e.
ensuring, that the tree uses the first selected item as the primary selection).

Comment 7

[lchiang]

Moving target milestone to "future" to be reviewed at a later time

Comment 8

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

oh, s**t. If we don't implement this, D&D of (multiple) msgs to the attachments
area must work on all platforms. Forwarding a bunch of mails to another physical
location is a moderately common task and shouldn't require mental and procedural
"gymnastics".

Comment 9

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Even if you had to drag them individually, that would still be better than 4.x 
(for Mac, at least) -- there you have to open each message in its own window, and
then drag its proxy icon to the message (just dragging it from the thread pane 
doesn't work).

Meanwhile, I think that when replying to multiple messages Mozilla should
*only* include the In-Reply-To msg-ids for the chronologically last of the 
messages being replied to, and *not* the msg-ids for all of the messages being 
replied to. Otherwise we'd produce bizarre threading results in other clients, 
and we'd surely be breaking the spirit (if not the letter) of some RFC. Using the 
`primary selection' (if there is indeed such a beast) wouldn't really be 
appropriate, as the order I select multiple messages in is very unlikely to have 
anything to do with where I want the reply to them to appear in the thread pane 
of other clients.

Comment 10

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

mpt, 4.x on Linux (and propably Win32) can both D&D multiple msgs to the
attachments pane and forward multiple msgs at once.

I'm not sure, adding msgs from different threads to the In-Reply-To header is a
good idea. This is likely to break other mailers. So, we would have to select
one or none. References however is intended for such a usage, according to my
interpretation of RFC822, sections 4.6.2 and 4.6.3.

Comment 11

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Note that the latest son-of-RFC822 draft talks about this in some detail (not
that it's terribly helpful, though).  See section 3.6.4 of
<http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-drums-msg-fmt-08.txt>

Comment 12

[Cormac F]

*** Bug 109734 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 127449 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[R.K.Aa.]

Is this partly fixed? Seems related to bug 57604

Comment 15

[Garth Wallace]

It's currently possible to forward several messages at once in a single message.
However, if you select several messages and hit Reply, it opens a separate
compose window for each message, instead of a single compose window with quoted
text from every selected message. So no, it's not fixed.

Comment 20

[Ian Neal]

2.0 is now "feature complete", please renominate if you think it is appropriate.

Comment 21

[C. Dyck]

Any chance to get that feature in TB 3.1 or Seamonkey 2.1? I'm tired of using mutt to do that job.

Comment 23

[jeroi]

Yeah I vote for this also!

Comment 24

[jeroi]

I'd leave the quotes out of the reply. Best bahviour would empty message with reply emails of selected emails. I dont want to sen every peoples quotations to every people. email is invidual post and keepit that way. I want to respond tho the same message to all people, who had asked similar questions from me. If quotations would be added, TB should when sending the multiemailreply, understand to send rigth quote to right recipient so that others dont see your conversation.