43829 - Remove signatures during reply to HTML message

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[pmock]

(Bug found while verifying bugzilla bug 9202)

Build Date & Platform Bug Found: 
 Win32 commercial seamonkey build 2000-062509-m17 installed on P500 Win98
 Linux commercial seamonkey build 2000-062509-m17 installed on P200 RedHat 6.1
 MacOS commercial seamonkey build 2000-062508-m17 installed on G3/400 OS 9.04

Overview Description: 
 When using the HTML editor to reply to a mail message, it fails to remove the 
properly formed signature.  It insteads, adds the signature in the middle of the 
previous signature.  

For example:
  ...
  ...   
  -- |> 3qatest05 Account
     |> Netscape Communications Corp.

  -- |> 3qatest05 Account
     |> Netscape Communications Corp.
     |> http://www.netscape.com

     |> http://www.netscape.com

Steps to Reproduce: 
1) Open Netscape Mail
2) Select the Edit menu and choose "Mail/News Account Setting"
3) Enable the option to include a signature
4) Specify a signature
5) Enable the option to use HTML editor
6) Save changes
7) Start a new mail message
   A html compose editor window should appear and should have your signature 
displayed.
8) Address message to yourself, add a title, and add some rich text
9) Send message and retrieve
10) Select the mail message
    It should display your message and signature
11) Click on the reply
    It does not remove the previous signature

Actual Results: 
    It does not remove the previous signature
    It adds another signature in the middle of the previous signature

Expected Results: 
  It should remove the previous signature.

Additional Builds and Platforms Tested On: 

Additional Information:
 This problems does not occur when replying using the plain text editor.

Comment 1

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

pmock, I assume form your description that you're replying to a HTML msg? I
don't remove the sig there, because there is no convention for marking a sig.
the "-- " convention only applies to plain text (and format=flowed), IIRC.
Please comment, if you know a convention about signatures in HTML. So, removing
sigs from HTML msg would be an extra feature. SEVERITY enhancement, helpwanted,
REASSIGNing to nobody.

Try the following: Reply to a plain text msg via the HTML composer. The sig
should be removed.

The /new/ sig being in the middle of the quote is a know bug (assigned to rhp,
IIRC).

Comment 2

[Phil Peterson]

Ben, it's ok with me if you want to make it helpwanted to remove signatures in
HTML. But Peter's describing a bug where the quoted material gets effectively
corrupted by the new signature, and we have to fix that. You guys decide if
that's one bug or two bugs :-)

Comment 3

[pmock]

The bug assigned to [e-mail] is bug 36570
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36570

Comment 4

[Phil Peterson]

ok, never mind :-)

Comment 5

[pmock]

Ben Bucksch 2000-06-26 10:52 wrote:
"... Try the following: Reply to a plain text msg via the HTML composer. The sig
 should be removed."

Ben,
 I replied to a plain text message that contained a sig using a HTML composer. 
The result, the sig in the quoted message was NOT removed.  Instead, the sig 
that was suppose to be added at the bottom of the reply was omitted. 
 Do you want me to log a separate bug on this behavior?
/Peter

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

pmock, please make sure to
[- send the original msg using 4.x to get a real plain text msg (not flowed)]
- use a different signature in Mozilla and the plain text msg you reply to to
avoid confusion with bug 36570.
If the sig is still not removed, please file a bug against me. Note, that it
works fine for me.

Comment 7

[pmock]

Thank Ben for the explaination.  I went back to retest and found I was 
experiencing bug 36570.  It did remove the correct sig.

Comment 8

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Updating SUMMARY.

IMO, we first need to define what a signature in HTML is before we can fix this
bug. As I said in another bug, "-- " in HTML doesn't make much sense to me.

Comment 9

[laurel]

This problem also exists when forwarding a message inline. 

Comment 10

[Koike Kazuhiko]

The signature is still included in the quotation.

Why is this bug marked as "enhancement" and assigned to "nobody"?

Comment 11

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Because there is no standard or even reasonable convention of what a signature
in HTML is.

Comment 12

[Koike Kazuhiko]

I overlooked you have already explained it.

I don't know standard or convention about signature, but it's reasonable
html mode and plain text mode work in the same way.

Comment 13

[Francisco León]

Can we put a fake html tag or something in the beginning and the end of a 
signature, like

<--Start Signature-->
Lizard User
Lizard Planet, Inc.
<--End Signature-->

So that the tag is there, but not visible, and then mozilla could be teached to 
remove anything between those tags when replying?

Comment 14

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

We do (since some time) insert <div class="moz-signature">.

To make it work cross-product (i.e. right), we still need a generally accepted
standard. But that would probably look similar and the change would be simple. I
don't expect transition problems either.

So, it would be possible now to fix this bug - it would at least work with
signatures generated by Mozilla.

Comment 15

[Francisco León]

-- is our best bet. Other clients that dont use this (ie outlook express) give 
us a problem since we cant blindly erase the last 4 lines in a message.

So my proposal is to fix the -- case in html just as with text and forget about 
everything else. This is not a must-have feature anyway and i think most if not 
all people can live without this fix (votes: 0 )

Comment 16

[Karl Palsson]

So where is the option that lets me never remove sig's in replies?

I'm having problems where peopls are sending out code reviews at work with the
diff inlined under their signature, and on reply, mozilla is chopping out the
entire diff.  This is "unhelpful" to say the least.  Any ideas?

Comment 17

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> So where is the option that lets me never remove sig's in replies?

I don't remember if there is any at all. It's offtopic, anyways.

Comment 18

[Brian Heinrich]

It's been a /long/ time since this bug has seen any activity.  With the work
being done on the infamous bug 62429 (it has apparently been checked in to
Thumperbunny, but has yet to make its way in to Seamonkey) and the fix to bug
141531, it would seem that this should be done in order to achieve consistency.

While Ben is correct in pointing out that there is no standards-compliant way in
which to deal with sig-stripping in HTML, it remains true that \n-- \n was
intended for newsreaders and was extended to e-mail.  If we argued for so long
against a misplaced sig that couldn't possibly be delimited (properly), why is
this case (stripping of sigs in HTML e-mail) being dismissed with a virtual
shrug of the shoulders?

I would like to see this bug fixed; to my mind, having sig-stripping behaviour
extended to HTML is desireable.  Obviously, the same codicils apply here as
apply in other cases:  we are concerned primarily with what follows a
well-formed sig delimiter, altho' we could concern ourselves with other cases if
we were to check a malformed delimiter against a User-Agent or X-Mailer string
(/e.g./, NC 4./x/'s use of \n--\n) or other indication that we're looking at a
sig (<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep> in Eudora, /e.g./).

I find Ben's comments to vary from the cryptic ('As I said in another bug, "-- "
in HTML doesn't make much sense to me' in comment #8) to the implicitly
dismissive ('Because there is no standard or even reasonable convention of what
a signature in HTML is' in comment #11 (as response to a query as to why this is
an RFE assigned to nobody@)).

I'm certainly not suggesting that we simply create a new standard; however, as
the whole idea of a signature has already been extended from newsgroups to
(plain-text) e-mail, I see no reason not to extend it likewise to HTML e-mail.

Thinking of Mozilla alone, |<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>| is a potential
problem in HTML e-mail that use HTML sigs, as is (/e.g./) |<pre cols="72"
class="moz-signature">-- | in the case of HTML e-mail that uses a plain-text sig.

Anyway, I don't mean to spam the bug, but this is a wishlist item for me:  a lot
of my correspondence utilises HTML, and a not-insignificant amount of that
involves sigs, so anything that would mean I have manually to <snip> out fewer
sigs would be a good thing.  So this kind of behaviour /would/ have utility. . . .

Yes, it would need to be user-configurable for the sake of business users (um .
. . they are the ones for whom bug 62429 is being fixed, right? ;-) ).

Comment 19

[Chris Ilias [:cilias]]

I'm still seeing this in 1.7Beta (release), but the sig isn't being placed in
the middle of the quoted one. The quoted sig is just is being quoted as a part
of the quoted message body. It's as if a non-standard sig delimiter was used.
(Using Windows XP Home)

Comment 20

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 296656 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 24

[Zane]

Wow!  This bug has been around since 2000!  Any way to get it more attention or is there a major design flaw preventing this from being fixed?