327621 - [TB] Make From/To name+email address in mail header pane selectable in order to allow copying [sender, recipients, Ctrl+C]

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 167010

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Joachim Kluge]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird Version 1.5 (20051201)

When viewing a mail the from/to is presented in the following way
From: "Joe Average" <[e-mail]>
To: "Johanna Average" <[e-mail]>

Both strings are not selectable by the user. You can only click them and a context menu appears. I'd like to select parts of the name+address string in order to copy the e.g. the name. With the actual implementation it's not possible to get the name out of the string without some workaround.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. select mail
2. in preview try to select parts of the "name" <[e-mail]> string

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Seamonkey bug 167010, which has a patch that's not very old but with no recent activity.  See also bug 269094.

Comment 3

[kaecyyalpha+mozilla]

This bug makes Thunderbird extremely frustrating when trying to put together mails to
multiple addresses quickly.

You can’t copy and paste email addresses from To, From fields, etc, drag and drop them into other emails, and so on-- way too clunky and difficult to manage!

Comment 4

[kaecyyalpha+mozilla]

This bug makes Thunderbird extremely frustrating when trying to put together mails to
multiple addresses quickly.

You can’t copy and paste email addresses from To, From fields, etc, drag and drop them into other emails, and so on-- way too clunky and difficult to manage!

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Mike Cowperthwaite from comment #1)
> Seamonkey bug 167010, which has a patch that's not very old but with no
> recent activity.  See also bug 269094.

It's so boring to dig in these age-old things that remain unsolved from generation to generation...

FTR:

Once upon a time, there was 
Seamonkey Bug 61497 - [SM] Can't select text in message headers / copy subject
42 duplicates were filed against that bug, most of them demanding that *all* of the headers should be selectable for copying, i.e. including *email addresses*.
That bug 61497 only fixed half of the problem (selecting subject), while filing the other half (selecting email addresses) as a Seamonkey bug:

Bug 167010 - Can't select text to copy email addresses in message header [sender, recipients, Ctrl+C]
That bug 167010 has been morphed into MailNews Core, so that's the main bug which needs to be fixed.

I guess we might want to keep this bug 327621 so that it can be more easily found and remembered for the *Thunderbird* Product. Technically, it's a dupe of bug 167010.

Comment 7

[[e-mail]]

Is there a possibility of getting this fixed at the earliest.  This a very handy feature for quick cut-paste of multiple email addresses and multi-address selection.  Fixing this will improve productivity.

Comment 8

[insaner]

a link to the previous (seamonkey) patch, that never got added.. maybe someone can pick up where the patch author left off and refactor it as tbird code?

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=200039&action=diff

from

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167010#c22

Comment 9

[Eric Jain]

Note that *pasting* comma-separated lists of addresses appears to be broken in Thunderbird 31, see bug 1059988.

Comment 10

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Attachment: Proposed change (1 line)

One line change to put the "full" e-mail address onto the clipboard.
I think this is more useful if someone wants to copy the name.

Comment 11

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Attachment: Proposed change (2 lines)

Oops, comment needed to change, too.

Comment 12

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Comment on attachment 8693764 [details] [diff] [review]
Proposed change (2 lines)

For me this looks good. But Magnus wrote in bug 167010 he'd like to stay this menu entry to the address only and add an entry for both, name and address.

But yeah, what would be the best label for this?

"Copy Full Email Address" comes in my mind but seems not so very descriptive.

Comment 13

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Well, this is trivial stuff. If we can figure out what we want to do before the next branch date/string freeze, I'll do it.

Frankly, I disagree with Magnus:
- You don't need two almost identical functions.
- If the new function copies the "full" e-mail address, you can delete the undesired
  parts upon paste.
- You can paste a "full" e-mail into a "To" field, that's even better. So I don't
  see much use of only copying the e-mail address.

As I said in the other bug: It's often annoyed me that I couldn't copy the name of the person. Usually I go reply and copy it from there.

Let me know what you want and I add the 10-15 lines that are required.

Comment 14

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Magnus, can you please decide now whether we can do this *without* another menu option. In bug 167010 comment #54 you said (quote):
> For 327621, I think the current address only should stay, though we
> should figure something out for "full mailbox".

As stated in comment #13, I disagree, but if you insist, I can add a separate menu item. This would require a string change, so it needs to be done *NOW* to make the next branch date on 14th Dec.

Comment 15

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Jorg, thanks for pushing these things forward, although we should not compromise on quality because we are rushing.

Part of that rush is that you're doing this in the wrong bug.
This bug 327621 [TB] and its mailnews duplicate Bug 167010 have the same goal:
Make the *text* of from/to headers freely *selectable* in the UI, even for partial or multiple selections.
Like we can currently select any part of subject directly and then copy that.

So with the proposed menus you are really discussing something else, namely:
Bug 99997 - [SM] "Copy email address" doesn't copy name
Bug 232021 - name should be included with email address when copying from header menu

As seen in the discussion on those bugs, we definitely want *both* email-only and full-email-with-name as separate options for copying.
I've proposed a dual menu item as a minimally intrusive solution in Bug 99997 Comment 34.
It may not be the maximally efficient solution, and certainly not the easiest to implement.
I'm now tending to just use two separate menus, "Copy Email Address", and "Copy Name and Email Address". That's simple and straightforward, most efficient for either scenario, and cheap to implement.

We cannot close this bug after you implement whatever menu solution, because the menu solution does not satisfy the demands of this bug. So I suggest that you move the discussion and future patches over to those other bugs where it belongs.

Comment 16

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Comment on attachment 8693764 [details] [diff] [review]
Proposed change (2 lines)

Thomas, the living encyclopedia of BMO.

Thanks. You know what, the smaller the bug number, the more I love fixing the bug. I'd love to move this to bug 99997, but I'll move it to bug 232021 instead.

Since over there you already decided on the UI, it will be a piece of cake.

Thanks again, you made my day (seriously).

Comment 17

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from comment #5)

I guess we might want to keep this bug 327621 so that it can be more easily
found and remembered for the Thunderbird Product. Technically, it's a dupe
of bug 167010.

True. Have just moved Bug 167010 into Thunderbird product (11 duplicates incl. this one and its dupe), because it's a front-end thing. So let's consolidate there.