3745 - Must handle Followup-to: poster in news

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect, P3)

Description

[Phil Peterson]

This is one of the "failing" points in the Good Netkeeping Seal of Approval (see
URL above). We should support Followup-to: poster in news. For the rules for
using "Followup-to: poster" see Son of 1036:
http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~larsi/notes/son-of-rfc1036.txt

Comment 1

[Phil Peterson]

JF, is this more a compose bug, or more a news bug (for sspitzer)?

Comment 2

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

It should be just a matter of having a field to let the user to enter a Followup-to address. At this point, we start to
have to much address fields in the compose UI and we should maybe start using popup menu for the label of the field.

Now, am i still very busy, I will really appreciate if sspitzer can take care of this...

Comment 3

[Phil Peterson]

> It should be just a matter of having a field to let the user to enter a
> Followup-to address

I think there's more to it than that. This bug is saying that when we reply to a
message which have Followup-To: poster, we should reply via email to the author
rather than via NNTP to the newgroup.

Comment 4

[Phil Peterson]

M8

Comment 5

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

moved to M9

Comment 6

[David :Bienvenu]

really moving to m9.

Comment 7

[lchiang]

correcting platform to All since this appears to be cross platform.

Comment 8

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

M11

Comment 9

[sol]

Phil filed a mailnews "Help Wanted" bug on this feature - bug 11041.

I don't think this needs to be fixed by PR1.

Comment 10

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

Everything is ready in Mime and Compose for it but as the new quoting isn't use
yet for quoting a news message it won't work.

Comment 11

[Phil Peterson]

*** Bug 11041 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

Fixed. News now uses new quoting

Comment 13

[Phil Peterson]

JF, when we spoke about this, I was under the impression that you didn't fix
Followup-To: poster, where that means reply via email rather than to the
newsgroup. Did I misunderstand?

Comment 14

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

Right, I did the minimal implementation. I did only the support for the header
"Followup-To: <any newsgroup>". We need specific handling for the following
headers:

"Followup-to: poster" or
"Followup-To-content"

I reopen the bug report and reassign it to Seth.

Comment 15

[Phil Peterson]

Triage to M15

Comment 16

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

changing qa contact back to lisa, since stacey is gone.

accepting.

Comment 17

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I think, this could be simply handled in the viewer by disabling "Reply to
Newsgroup".

Comment 18

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Replacing 11041 in [HELP WANTED]

Comment 19

[Phil Peterson]

> I think, this could be simply handled in the viewer by disabling "Reply to
> Newsgroup".

I'm not crazy about that idea. I think enabling/disabling UI elements based on
something as hidden as a Followup-To header sounds too sneaky for users to
figure out what it means.

My preference would be to do this the same way we handle Reply-To. So one click
on the Reply button would just build a mail message to the author rather than a
news message to the group.

Comment 20

[Claus Färber]

That's a very bad idea. Users should always be able to override such headers.
So all Mozilla should do about this is to warn the user when s/he tries to send
a followup.

Comment 21

[Phil Peterson]

> Users should always be able to override such headers

They can override it. Just delete the poster's email address and re-enter the
newsgroup name.

I'm happy to take a cue from other newsreaders who handle Followup-to: poster,
but the idea of giving a warning dialog box whenever you reply to a message
which has followup-to: poster seems very unattractive to me.

Comment 22

[John Moreno]

> the idea of giving a warning dialog box whenever you reply to a message

> which has followup-to: poster seems very unattractive to me.



Phil, "poster" will be extremely rare, out of 21,000 articles that I have

locally, only 27 used it, and of that only 7 were not FAQs or otherwise

repeating post which are seldom followed up.



This rarity is why the alert is needed -- and why it won't be annoying to

the user.

Comment 23

[Phil Peterson]

Ok, using infrequency of occurrence to support a warning dialog seems reasonable
to me. That argues even more strongly to leave the UI for Reply to Newsgroup
enabled.

Comment 24

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

moving to m16.

Comment 25

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

*** Bug 14873 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 26

[selmer (gone)]

Triage to M18.  Please let me know if this must be in beta2.

Comment 27

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

This is a GNKSA MUST, adjusting SUMMARY.

Comment 28

[lchiang]

nominate for nsbeta3.

Comment 29

[selmer (gone)]

Adding mail4 triage nomination keyword.

Comment 30

[lchiang]

- per mail triage
Adding helpwanted for mozilla.org to contribute to Mozilla.

Comment 31

[scottputterman]

Sorry for the extra mail. Removing mail4 keyword.

Comment 32

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 60690 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 33

[laurel]

mass change of huang's news bugs to stephend.

Comment 34

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

clearing milestone, m17 and m18 are meaningless now.  these need to be triages
along with the rest.

Comment 35

[Aleksey Nogin]

I think it would be both more intuitive and easier to implement if "Followup-to:
poster" would just mean that when a user presses "Reply", [s]he will get the
"To" field filled in the new compose window instead of the Newsgroup field.

More intuitive:
When user presses "Reply", [s]he normally expects the "default" reply action to
be taken. Mozilla always does exactly this - it chooses the most natural way to
answer a message depending on whether it's a newsgroup message or an e-mail
message, whether "reply-to" or "followup-to" headers are present, etc. This is
the same thing as using "reply-to" and "followup-to"; "followup-to: poster"
should just cause the sender's address appear in the "To:" field of the message
being composed. 

Popping up a warning seems to be extremely excessive. "It would not happen to
often" is a bad exuse. First when some popular newsreader (Mozilla?) will add an
easy UI to set Follow-up to poster, this will be used more often. But more
importantly, in some particular newsgroup it may be customary to use "Follow-up:
poster" often and we should not turn replying to such newsgroup into a fight
with warnings (with having to keep doing the right thing manually).

Easy to implement:
IMHO, fixing this bug would only require a small modification of "if (!
followUpTo.IsEmpty())" branch of
QuotingOutputStreamListener::QuotingOutputStreamListener in nsMsgCompose.cpp -
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/mailnews/compose/src/nsMsgCompose.cpp#1599

Comment 36

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

*** Bug 95145 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 37

[Håkan Waara]

I have a fix.

Comment 38

[Håkan Waara]

Attachment: proposed fix

Comment 39

[Håkan Waara]

I tried my patch with three testcases set up by sspitzer in netscape.test. All 
tests were done by clicking "Reply" on the message in question.

Here are the tests:

--

Test #1: 
From: Seth Spitzer <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: netscape.test
Subject: follow up to test #1
Followup-To: netscape.public.test

Result: 
New compose window with "Newsgroup: netscape.public.test"

Test #2:
From: Seth Spitzer <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: netscape.test
Subject: follow up to test #2
Followup-To: poster

Result:
New compose window with "To: Seth Spitzer <[e-mail]>"

Test #3:
From: Seth Spitzer <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: netscape.test
Subject: followup to test #3
Followup-To: poster

Result:
New compose window with "To: [e-mail]"

--

Comments?

Comment 40

[Aleksey Nogin]

How about

Followup-To: poster, group1, group2

?

Comment 41

[Håkan Waara]

Aleksey, the RFC says that is incorrect use:

Followup-To-content = Newsgroups-content / "poster"

Note the '/' which means OR. Either the magic word "poster" is put there OR
newsgroup content (e.g., netscape.test).

Comment 42

[[e-mail]]

Sounds good. Patch looks sane to me.
Please find someone who can give official r=/sr= stamps
Also if you don't have CVS write you need to find someone to check this in once
it has good reviews.

Comment 43

[John Moreno]

Does your patch include a warning dialog when "poster" is encountered?

Comment 44

[Håkan Waara]

No. The RFCs and guidelines doesn't say it should.

Comment 45

[John Moreno]

It needs to give a warning to meet GNKSA requirements:

==
6) Direct followups to the correct newsgroups
[...]
If the original article's "Followup-To: " header is set to "poster", the
software MUST warn the user that the original poster requested an e-mail
reply, and generate an e-mail reply by default.
==

As I said in one of my earlier comments, "poster" is fairly rare, if you don't 
warn the user he will almost certainly not notice that his followup is going 
out as an email reply.

Comment 46

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sr=sspitzer

please get ducarroz to review this, since he is the module owner for compose.

after you land this fix, keep the bug open.  We'll use it to track the alert we
need to add for GNKSA.

Comment 47

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

R=ducarroz

Comment 48

[Håkan Waara]

Fix checked in. Keeping this bug open to also fix the warning.

Jglick, mpt:  what's a good wording for the warning?

Comment 49

[John Moreno]

How about:
"The poster requested that followups be mailed instead of posted."

Or:
"The poster of this article requested that replies be sent to him by email 
rather than posted publicly.  I'll prepare an email reply for you; you can still 
turn it into a follow if you really want."

Comment 50

[Mike Young]

The second choice there is better, but Mozilla isn't that "friendly" We never
use the word "I" or "you" in the program, and I think it is right not to. (The
computer is a machine, and I'm really not confortable talking to it like its my
best friend.) :-) Also, not all posters are "him"

Something along the lines of...

"The user who posted this article requested that replies be emailed rather than
posted publicly." 

And possibly an explanation on how to post to the newsgroup instead. (Although
that may be a little longwinded.)

Comment 51

[Garth Wallace]

That "I'll do such-and-such for you" is giving me horrible flashbacks to that 
damned MS Office paperclip. ;)

Still, it does something that the other suggestions don't: it makes it clear 
that the composition window is for an email reply. With the other options (so 
far), a user might think that Mozilla is telling him that he did something 
wrong. "The poster said that I should mail a reply instead of posting to the 
newsgroup? So should I close this window and click "reply to sender" instead?"

Comment 52

[Håkan Waara]

Oh, no, please no "I".

Also, it's not "this post", it's the post you are replying to (may not be the
original post), that requests it...

Comment 53

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sfraser's mt newswatcher has GNKSA, how does he handle it?

we can look at other news readers for inspiration.

jglick / robinf can you suggest a good wording, when you have cycles?  (I
consider this low UI priority). 

Comment 54

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

"(i) The poster requested a reply by email, not a public followup to the
newsgroup. The recipient field will be prepared accoundingly."?
(i) = Information message box

Comment 55

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

maybe s/ a / the usual / (to avoid the feeling that the user made something wrong)

Comment 56

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Attachment: How MT-NewsWatcher handles it (system-modal alert(!), and too much text, but otherwise reasonable)

Comment 57

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Attachment: Outlook Express's alert is more complex, even though it's missing the `Cancel' button which a confirmation alert really should have

Comment 58

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Attachment: What Mozilla's UI for this should look like, once Hyatt implements <floatingwindow> (disappears when closed by the user or when the message is sent, whichever is sooner)

Comment 59

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Attachment: What Mozilla's UI for this should look like until then

Comment 60

[John Moreno]

Seth Spitzer wrote:
> (I consider this low UI priority)

If you mean the exact wording, I agree, if you mean the warning itself, I 
disagree.  Doing it without a warning would be almost as bad as making the change 
after the "Send" button has been hit.

Comment 61

[robinf]

I like mpt's proposal (id 45916), with a few editorial changes:

"The author of this message has requested that replies to this message be sent
only to the author."

"If you also want to reply to the newsgroup, add a new row in the addressing
area, choose Newsgroup from the recipients list, and enter the name of the
newsgroup."

"((OK))"

Comment 62

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Vocabulary: You *followup* to a post, but you *reply* via email. (Personally, I
don't like this distinction, but it seems to be used by GNKSA.)

Comment 63

[jglick]

I like mpt's/robin's suggestion. As far as "reply" vs "followup" wording, the 
toolbar/menu items that the user selected to cause this situation in News do say 
"Reply" so we probably want the dialog to parallel that as well.

Comment 64

[James Green]

robinf said, quoting the proposed text,
"...add a new row in the addressing area, choose Newsgroup from the recipients
list..."

Pardon? I lost it somewhere abouts, "new row." I certainly don't understand
that, thus I suspect a high proportion of users will see the words fly over
their heads too.

Jen: the accepted terminology shouldn't be changed just because someone
accidently used different wording in toolbars. We should use "followup" and
"reply" contextually (news and mail respectively) and fix the toolbars rather
than follow the error through the rest of the application. Extra work, yes, but
it needs doing.

Comment 65

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

If we are adding a dialog telling the user how to reply to the newsgroup, why
not go farther and asking the user if he/she wants to reply to the newsgroup as
well despite the sender will. If the user says yes, we will add ourself the
newsgroup in the list of the recipient. No need for the user to do extra
operation than just pressing the right button!

Comment 66

[jglick]

If the consensus is that "followup" is more appropriate that "reply" in this 
dialog, thats fine with me. :-)

Comment 67

[robinf]

After talking with jglick, we understand the point raised by Ben and others
about "reply" versus "followup", and we are OK with using "followup" in the
alert dialog....

"The author of this message has requested that followups to this message be sent
only to the author."

"If you also want to followup to the newsgroup, add a newsgroup row in the
addressing area, and enter the name of the newsgroup."

"((OK))"

Comment 68

[James Green]

First paragraph is fine. Second paragraph is still not right. It's too unclear
on first reading exactly what you are saying. Notice that you're also telling
the user what the author wants to happen, not what *will* happen.

My suggestion:

"The author of this message has requested that followups to this message be sent
only to the author.

"Your response will be emailed to the author of the message. If you also want it
to appear in newsgroup(s), please add them as you would normally."

It's longer, but perhaps worth it to reduce ambiguity? I also don't like
referring to 'rows' in an message composition context, as it likely means
nothing to users. "As you would normally" will clearly raise the question, "how
then?" to those users who have never used Mozilla to post to usenet before, but
then they need to learn sometime.

What do other people think? I'm not 100% convinced my suggestion is the best,
but neither are the others (imho).

Comment 69

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

> If we are adding a dialog telling the user how to reply to the newsgroup,

No, we're adding an alert telling the user that they're replying to the author.
The <description> on how to override that (by following up to the newsgroup)
will be rarely needed, and is there just in case.

>                                                                           why
> not go farther and asking the user if he/she wants to reply to the newsgroup
> as well despite the sender will.

Because such an alert would have several problems.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
|:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::|
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
|   ,   The author of this message requested that responses be sent |
|  /!\  to the author only. Something something something?          |
|  """                                                              |
|                                                                   |
|                                                                   |
|       ( Follow Up to Group )     ( Cancel ) (( Reply to Author )) |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Firstly, the alert ends up with three buttons, instead of a single simple `OK'
button. (As I mentioned when attaching the Outlook Express screenshot, a
`Cancel' button is pretty much compulsory in a confirmation alert.) Since the
button text is all many users read, we would have effectively tripled the
complexity of the alert.

Secondly, a confirmation alert should only be used when the user is in danger of
some sort (and not for trivial things like, for example, asking them if they
want to go online to send unsent messages). I guess we could claim that they're
in danger of wasting time by sending a reply which was intended for the group to
the author only, but it would be a bit of a stretch.

And thirdly, I can't work out a sensible question to ask. The best I can think
of is `Are you sure you want to continue?', but that (like all the other options
I considered) seems a little misleading since `continue' here means `do
something *other than* what you asked for'.

... Which is why I recommended the simple note alert instead. The reason the
second paragraph is awkward is not the fault of the alert; it's the fault of the
composition UI itself, which has a nearly-empty toolbar yet doesn't offer simple
toggle buttons for replying to the sender and/or following up to the group. This
makes it unnecessarily difficult to switch from a reply to a followup or vice
versa during composition (see also GNKSA section 9). Someone should file an RFE
for that, whereupon this alert could become considerably simpler.

Corrections:
*   `follow-ups be sent' --> `responses be sent' (carefully generalizing for
    both replies and followups);
*   `to the headers section' --> `to the addressing area' (robinf was right
    about that bit).

Comment 70

[Håkan Waara]

I'll go ahead and implement robinf, jglick and mpt's conclusion.

Comment 71

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

jg wrote:
> We should [...] fix the toolbars

Filed bug 95623.

Comment 72

[Håkan Waara]

I can't do the paragraph thing, because of a bug in nsIPrompt (bug 95697 filed).

Patch coming up.

Ducarroz, Seth: please review.

Comment 73

[Håkan Waara]

Attachment: fix 2: bring up a dialog, add some code comments.

Comment 74

[Håkan Waara]

BTW, I wrapped the .properties string locally (so no need to comment about it).

Comment 75

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

do not get the prompt from the prompt service but directly from the compose
window. The alert need to be modal to the compose window. Do something like 
this:

  nsCOMPtr<nsIDOMWindowInternal> composeWindow
  compose->GetDomWindow(getter_AddRefs(composeWindow));
  if (composeWindow)
     composeWindow->GetPrompter(getter_AddRefs(prompt));

BTW, the function nsMsgCompose::GetDomWindow need to addref the result, that's a
bug but nobody is using this interface yet.

Also, please define a constant for the string 12563

Comment 76

[Håkan Waara]

Attachment: fix with ducarroz's suggestions incorporated. btw, the dialog stopped working when I wrapped the text. seeking reviews.

Comment 77

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

1)Please put the #define FOLLOWUPTO_ALERT 12563 with others in
nsMsgComposeStringBundle.h, it should be renamed and declared as something like: 

#define NS_MSG_FOLLOWUPTO_ALERT  NS_MSG_GENERATE_SUCCESS(12563)

2)
+            if (composeWindow)
+            {
+              nsCOMPtr<nsIPrompt> prompt;
+              composeWindow->GetPrompter(getter_AddRefs(prompt));
+              nsMsgDisplayMessageByID(prompt, FOLLOWUPTO_ALERT);
+            }

should be

+            nsCOMPtr<nsIPrompt> prompt;
+            if (composeWindow)
+              composeWindow->GetPrompter(getter_AddRefs(prompt));
+            nsMsgDisplayMessageByID(prompt, NS_MSG_FOLLOWUPTO_ALERT);

as nsMsgDisplayMessageByID nows to deal with a null prompt.

Apart that, R=ducarroz

Comment 78

[Håkan Waara]

I will keep:

+            if (composeWindow)
+            {
+              nsCOMPtr<nsIPrompt> prompt;
+              composeWindow->GetPrompter(getter_AddRefs(prompt));
+              nsMsgDisplayMessageByID(prompt, FOLLOWUPTO_ALERT);
+            }

Because I don't want to waste our time loading a prompt if we don't have a
composeWindow to start with. Nor do I want to show a null prompt.

Comment 79

[Håkan Waara]

Attachment: new patch

Comment 80

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

The problem will be that you will not show an alert at all in case of you cannot
get a promt, think that should not append but we nerver know!

I personnaly do not understand your point! For me is better to show the message
at  any price than not showing it!

Comment 81

[Håkan Waara]

Bienvenu / Seth: can I please get a sr=?

Comment 82

[David :Bienvenu]

why isn't  NS_MSG_GENERATE_FAILURE(12563)

really 12533?

Comment 83

[Håkan Waara]

Because that one is already taken I think.

Look in the properties file.

I just added the #define in the middle of the file (grouped with other, similar
errors).

Comment 84

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

hwaara, my r= was conditional of few changes which you haven't fully done
therefore ignore it, no R= yet.

Again, I don't think is good to have a patch where we could miss the alert!

Also, don't use NS_MSG_GENERATE_FAILURE but rather NS_MSG_GENERATE_SUCCESS as
this is a informative message and not an error message.

Comment 85

[Håkan Waara]

Why would it be better to 1) Load stuff if other things are broken and thus 2)
display a null prompt than not displaying this "informative" alert?

I still don't see that. I haven't ignored it, as I said in previous comments, I
refrained. :)

Do you have any good reason why we should do that?

New patch coming up with NS_MSG_GENERATE_SUCCESS

Comment 86

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

why do you need by a null prompt? if you pass null to the
nsMsgDisplayMessageByID, this function will try to get a valid prompt and if it
cannot, it will not display the alert. What's wrong with that?

Comment 87

[Håkan Waara]

Attachment: best patch

Comment 88

[Håkan Waara]

Fine. I'll update the patch to accommodate your comment.

I misunderstood you; thought you meant it will display a _null prompt_ (no error
text), which wouldn't help much. ;)

Comment 89

[Håkan Waara]

Attachment: last patch, hopefully. r=ducarroz (right?)

Comment 90

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

R=ducarroz. Thanks for fixing nsMsgCompose::GetDomWindow

Comment 91

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sr=sspitzer

jglick / robinf, please confirm that this is the appropriate alert text:

"The author of this message has requested that responses be sent only to the
author. If you also want to reply to the newsgroup, add a new row to the
addressing area, choose Newsgroup from the recipients list, and enter the name
of the newsgroup."

Comment 92

[Håkan Waara]

fix checked in.

jen, please add the alert and the behaviour of followup-to: poster to the spec.
thanks.

Comment 93

[John Moreno]

> If you also want to reply to the newsgroup, add a new row to the
> addressing area, choose Newsgroup from the recipients list, and enter 
> the name of the newsgroup.

This satisfies the GNKSA, but in my opinion it runs too close to 
suggesting that doing both is the right thing to do, and that is generally 
frowned upon (also see bug #37028, if someone used "nobody" the 
wording would be absolutely wrong).

Comment 94

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Using builds:

RedHat 7.1 - 2001-08-28-08
Windows 2K - 2001-08-28-03
Mac OS 9.1 - 2001-08-28-08

Posting with an additional widget of Followup-To: poster does indeed, upon reply
of that message, warn with the appropriate text (to address other comments
regarding this text, please file a new bug) and pre-fill the addressing widget
with the To: header and the poster's e-mail address.

Comment 95

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

*** Bug 96640 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 96

[Stewart Gordon]

I know this was a while ago, but still....

Comment 45 states that by GNKSA criteria a newsreader must warn the user of a
Followup-To: poster header, so those of you who are against it are out of luck
unless you want to set an option.

What's more, it's usually a violation of Usenetiquette to ask for an e-mail
reply - see http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/mail-responses.html for the
good reasons.  I don't think it a good course of action to make life easier for
the naughty ones, nor consequently harder for the well-behaved people who are
expecting a reply to someone's question to appear on the 'group.

And most of us would be p***ed off to try to post a followup to a 'group, only
to find after sending it that it hadn't gone to the 'group at all, but only to
some random's private email address.

My inclination would be to have a user preference for this.  Something like:

When a newsgroup poster has requested a reply by mail:
 <*> Prompt me for action
 < > Reply by e-mail
 < > Reply to newsgroup
 < > Reply both by e-mail and to newsgroup