498326 - Signature delimiter does not appear when composing a reply

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Christopher Galik]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_7; en-us) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17
Build Identifier: 3.0b3pre

When composing a reply to a message using latest trunk, the "--" signature delimiter does not appear, but the signature text does.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set up a signature, either by typing text into config pane or selecting a plain text file
2. Reply to a message.
3. Text for signature will appear, but "--" signature delimiter will not.
Actual Results:  
< LF >
< LF >
<> SIGNATURE TEXT <>
<> SIGNATURE TEXT <>
<> SIGNATURE TEXT <>
< LF >
On blah blah blah, So-and-so wrote:
<> QUOTED TEXT <>
<> QUOTED TEXT <>

Expected Results:  
< LF >
< LF >
-- (SIG DELIMITER)
<> SIGNATURE TEXT <>
<> SIGNATURE TEXT <>
<> SIGNATURE TEXT <>
< LF >
On blah blah blah, So-and-so wrote:
<> QUOTED TEXT <>
<> QUOTED TEXT <>

When replying to a message, I just have to be sure to arrow down a few lines, place the delimiter manually, then arrow back up to the top and being my reply.

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

Apparently you have your reply settings to start the reply above the quote and to place the signature "below my reply (above the quote)". In this case, adding the signature separator would include the quote into the signature, therefore it is omitted (note that there actually is a space after the two dashes, which you probably don't add when including it manually, thus it's formally not a signature separator).

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reply_above_quoted_message

Unless there is sufficient motivation to add a non-separating "--" without a space in that case, this report should be resolved as invalid (not a bug).

Comment 2

[Christopher Galik]

Attachment: Normal signature attachment, plain composition

This is how a signature is applied when composing a new message.  Note the "--" delimiter at the beginning.

Comment 3

[Christopher Galik]

Attachment: Reply signature

This is how a signature looks on a reply.  Note the lack of "--" to start the sig.

Comment 4

[Christopher Galik]

Alright, I'll yield that how I think it should work and what the accepted standard of how it should work seemingly contradict each other.  And you are correct, I don't put a trailing space after the two dashes.  

If no one else wants this feature, then I suppose I'll stick to putting my own "--", sans space,  on my replies.

Comment 6

[Patrick Cable]

I noticed this as well, and couldn't figure out why it's changed. 

Is there any information on why it changed?

Comment 7

[j.couzinie]

Hello,
The real problem is that the signature is duplicated when you reply(or forward) to an email and change the "From" field to another one.
I'm working in a call center and we have to change the From field in order for our email adress to appear as "[e-mail]" or "[e-mail]" depending on the email purpose...


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create/Use two Mail accounts
2. Use settings : "start the reply above the quote" and "place the signature "below my reply (above the quote)"
3. Set a signature file in both of them
4. Reply or Forward a message
5. Change the from field to a different account
==> The signature will be duplicated

Comment 8

[rsx11m]

> (comment #7) The real problem is that the signature is duplicated when you reply
> to an email and change the "From" field to another one.

That's bug 218346 though.

Comment 9

[Andrea Monni]

This is definitely a bug and should be fixed as soon as possible:

4.3. Usenet Signature Convention


   There is a long-standing convention in Usenet news which also
   commonly appears in Internet mail of using "-- " as the separator
   line between the body and the signature of a message.  When
   generating a Format=Flowed message containing a Usenet-style
   separator before the signature, the separator line is sent as-is.
   This is a special case; an (optionally quoted or quoted and stuffed)
   line consisting of DASH DASH SP is neither fixed nor flowed.

   Generating agents MUST NOT end a paragraph with such a signature
   line.

   A receiving agent needs to test for a signature line both before the
   test for a quoted line (see Section 4.5) and also after logically
   counting and deleting quote marks and stuffing (see Section 4.4) from
   a quoted line.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3676#section-4.3

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

rsx11m, are you still of the opinion this is INVALID?

Comment 12

[rsx11m]

Basically yes, otherwise the quote would be considered part of the signature and rendered/removed as such. I don't see a way out of it, and RFC 3676 doesn't really cover that case (no mention of quotes following the signature).

With bug 58406 now in place, a workaround for Thunderbird 3.3 would be to set the mail.identity.default.suppress_signature_separator or the respective id# pref to "true" and then add the DDS separator manually to the signature. If that's sufficient for the case desired here we can probably close this bug.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

rsx11m, thanks

Comment 14

[Jonathan Protzenko [:protz]]

Also, if you have the signature separator and the signature above the quoted text when top-posting, when hitting "reply" to one of these messages, everything after the signature is discarded, including the quote. So yes, definitely INVALID.