333110 - "AW:", "Réf:", "Betr.:", ... subject prefixes should be treated like "Re:"

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 29179

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Gert-Jan Vons]

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/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

When replying to a message, TB won't prefix the subject with "Re:" if the "Re:" prefix is already there.

However, that prefix is subject to localisation. In my inbox, I see

- "Réf:" (short for "Reference"), used by french-speaking people
- "AW:" (short for "Antwort", answer), used in german-speaking people
- "Betr.:" (short for "betreft", in reference to) used by dutch-speaking people

and no doubt there are many others.

When I receive mails that use those localised prefixes, TB adds a "Re:" in front of the prefix that is already there. And since the mailer on the other side tends to do the same, there will be a whole series of Re: Ref: Betr.: AW: ... after a couple of exchanges, resulting in a very long subject line of which the interesting part isn't visible anymore message list.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Send yourself a mail with a subject line starting with "AW:", "Betr.:", or ...
2. once received, hit the reply button

Actual Results:  
The subject line has "Re:" in front of the "AW:", "Betr.:", ...

Expected Results:  
I'm not sure what the best solution would be, but I'd expect either
- the existing prefix is kept as is, the reply doesn't add "Re:" when
  it detects a known prefix
or
- the existing prefix is replaced with "Re:"


A built-in list with the most common prefixes would improve the user experience.
But since TB cannot possibly know all the prefixes used on the planet (mainly created using other e-mail clients), there should probably be some preference string that people can edit in order to specify additional prefixes.

Comment 1

[Ray Booysen]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 29179 ***