553958 - Allow different email signatures for HTML and plain text messages

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Account Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Wayne Carruthers]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.20) Gecko/20081217 Firefox/2.0.0.20
Build Identifier: 

Thunderbird does not provide for separate signature files for text & html mail

Basically the email system provides for either format & it cannot be predicted which a recipient is using so a standard part of preferences should be the ability to set up text only and html email signatures separately

Without separate signatures one or other format will not present the sender details correctly in the footer of the email

The above is highlighted when setting a HTML signature with a logo or image
& using a table format

Overall this is one of the drawbacks to use of thunderbird

 

Reproducible: Always




M$ software handles the separate signatures quite well but at a high overhead as alway

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

This seems to be a special case of bug 73567 and may be covered there.

Comment 2

[Wayne Carruthers]

This is not a "special Case" it is the very basic core of sending email

Multiple signatures are clearly a long standing request & are needed if Thunderbird is to truely be an viable alternative to M$, Eudora or Pegasus

The key is that any email message is a 2 part message, text & HTML

So for each of the multiple signatures there need to be two parts, text & HTML so that both formats present the user properly which is not the case at this point in time

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

(In reply to comment #2)
> The key is that any email message is a 2 part message, text & HTML

Not necessarily, one can send plain-text or HTML-only e-mails as well.

> So for each of the multiple signatures there need to be two parts, text & HTML
> so that both formats present the user properly which is not the case at this
> point in time

If you have a signature in one format, and the message is sent in the other, it will be down- or up-converted as needed. Thus, the issue you mention would only apply if one wishes to have explicit signatures for HTML vs. text messages. Signatures should be present in both parts in a multipart/alternative message.

Note that I've only marked this bug as a possible duplicate of bug 73567 and left it open for a second opinion.

Comment 4

[Wayne Carruthers]

Apologies, I dont want to detract from all the good work by so many people or start a slanging match as I support thunderbird and encourage it's adoption

Dont the RFC's specify multi part ?, you cant predict the recipient settings.

Re conversion of signatures, I have looked at that repeatedly acting on requests from people to set up signatures to handle both text & HTML and when setting up HTML signatures they dont translate to text well if at all as in the case of a single image HTML signature.

As others have commented in the long standing bug/request, this can be a blocker in adoption of Thunderbird as it simply cant match M$ & others in signature capabilities