619461 - Consider adding option to disable "Me" shorthand in message header

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Spinning off from bug 478466. Relevant excerpt:

> What if you have more than one personality?  Or what if you sign 
> yourself as
> 
>    Prof. Smith <[e-mail]>
> 
> towards your students and therefore expect their emails replies
> to contain this same "To:" line, whereas among friends you use
> 
>    Patty <[e-mail]>
> 
> Replies to any of these will just show up as
> 
>    You
> 
> and if your students figure out you use Thunderbird 3.0beta,
> they might even have fun of writing emails to you addressed to
> 
>    Asshole <[e-mail]>
> 
> and you would never notice it! --- even when you hover the mouse
> over the "You", you will only see [e-mail].

Note that bug 474721 only fixes this issue when you have multiple identities with different email addresses. It doesn't address the issue when you have two identities with the same email address but a different display name.

Comment 1

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

CCing relevant folks

Comment 2

[David E. Ross]

I created a Bugzilla query for the bug reports I am tracking.  I run that query twice each week.  Please do not cc me on any bug reports.

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

I think the "official" way to spin off a bug is to clone it, which in this case would have inherited a substantial CC list though...

(Quoting bug 478466 comment #87)
> (In reply to bug 478466 comment #3)
> > (2) The other issue is the one of localization, [...]
> I don't see this issue addressed by any of the patches, i.e., provide a simple
> way (e.g., by leaving the strings empty in the .properties file) for localizers
> to opt out of the "You" for their region.

A global preference option would also have the advantage to elegantly resolve this issue. Localizers could override such a pref in their l10n-customizations if they consider the "You"/"Me" or any variant of those inappropriate.

Comment 4

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to rsx11m from comment #3)
> A global preference option would also have the advantage to elegantly
> resolve this issue. Localizers could override such a pref in their
> l10n-customizations if they consider the "You"/"Me" or any variant of those
> inappropriate.

I haven't seen any localizers raise concerns about this, now that we're using "Me" instead of "You". Since I designed this code explicitly to make it easier for add-ons to modify the behavior, I think it would be reasonable to close this. Thoughts?