36879 - Honor format preference of recipient despite "Ask" dialog

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect, P3)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Reproduce:
1. Create an address book entry A with "Prefers plain text" disabled (will
actually enable "Prefers HTML").
2. Create a second address book entry B with "Prefers plain text" enabled (will
actually do nothing, i.e. enable "we don't know").
3. Create a new mail A with colored formatting.
4. Send. In the ask dialog, set send as plain text.
5. Create a new mail B with colored formatting and different topic from mail A.
6. repeat step 4., but send as HTML.
7. Recieve mails. Open them.

Actual result:
The first mail is sent as plain text to *both* recipients, the second one as
plain text to both recipients.

Expected result:
Mail A will be sent as HTML to recipient A and as plain text to B.

The other case is dependant on bug 36878: There should be also an option to
*always" send plain text to a recipient. Please wrote the code for this case, so
we can easily enable this, when bug 36878 is fixed.

nsbeta2 nomination - this is important interop.

Comment 1

[Phil Peterson]

[nsbeta2-]. This is a feature which isn't on our PRD. I also think it's a very
risky thing to send the same message with different contents to different
recipients.

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I don't consider this a feature, but a bug. I explicitly told Mozilla to send

this recipient plain text (/HTML).

Comment 3

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

The setting in the address book is the default behavior. If later you are asked 
to choose a format because not all the recipient are supporting HTML and you 
choose HTML, the message will be send in HTML, that's normal. Maybe we should 
change the wording of the Alert to be more explanatory about the consequence of 
sending as HTML only.

About sending the same message in different format depending of the recipient, I 
am totally against because you won't be able to reply to all the recipients:

A send a message to B & C, but we send HTML to B and PT to C.
B will receive a message addressed only to himself, B doesn't know that the 
message is also addressed to C
same problem for C vs. B.

Comment 4

[lchiang]

mark verified.  Ben, if you wish, you can reopen this as helpwanted bug for 
someone to design this feature.

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Lisa, I didn't consider the last problem ducarroz mentioned. Unless unless I
have a better idea, I'll leave it WONTFIX.