366185 - Change default attachment name encoding from RFC 2231 to old RFC 2047 (mail.strictly_mime.parm_folding to 0)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Marcus]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060926 SeaMonkey/1.5a
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060926 SeaMonkey/1.5a

This is a sister bug of Bug 309566 for Seamonkey, filed from an ongoing discussion about what prevents Seamonkey in an professional environment. As you can read in Bug 309566 there are a lot of problems with other mail clients receiving attachments with RFC 2231 encoded filenames. Most ppl. are not aware about the change and the receiver blame the sender.

Please change the default of mail.strictly_mime.parm_folding to 0 for some time (years) until the large mass of clients support RFC 2231.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. send mail with non-US characters in filename
2. receive with outlook (express) or a web mailer

Actual Results:  
the filename of the attachment isn't shown correct

Expected Results:  
Mail client of receiver should display the correct filename of the attachment

To get Seamonkey more used in companies the current behavior of Seamonkey 1.0.x, 1.1 beta and actual Versions has to changed back.
Most companies use Outlook (Express) which is even in the 2007 edt. not capable of RFC 2231, who knows when. 

But this is not the only client having problems, from comments to Bug 309556:
# 30 Eudora
# 42 The Bat!
# 32 yahoo.com  as web mailer 
I can confirm this also for two large german web mail sites: www.gmx.de and www.web.de

In business environment ppl. don't have much knowledge about this email stuff, they just push a button. If they have the knowledge about changing the mail client, they don't have administration rights. So if they got trouble with a mail they call up and blame the sender. 
When they could receive mails before an update to Seamonkey the problem is located (SM) or just because calls get in after the update. Maybe someone get a hint to this pref and has to change this for all profiles but IMHO in most cases the version is just switched back or even worse the mail client is changed to Outlook ("everyone is using it", "it's working" ...)

Just think about an average secretary doing mail for the boss who can't handle it himself.

Bug 309566 already got 24 duplicates showing the impact of the change.

I'm not against supporting RFC 2231 but it's not the right time for default. We have to wait until the large mass (eg. Microsoft) can handle it. This includes also the time until this client is distributed.
The mail part is more important than the web in an professional environment. In an private environment one don't care (much) or can even persuade the other to switch to Mozilla or an other client.

Some related Bugs are:
Bug 323388 - add UI to enable/disable rfc2231 support 
Bug 323390 - add a warning about non-rfc2231 compliant mua
Bug 348821 - describe about new "RFC2331 compliance" in "Release Notes"

IMHO an UI is a good thing, while a warning get annoying and most ppl. don't understand it.

Comment 1

[Marcus]

Bug 309566 got fixed with a new encoding style and defaults to 3 (see encoding style table in comment 88). The patch made it in SM 1.1.1.