83907 - Can't turn off plaintext graphical quotes without manually editing prefs.js

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[Skewer]

This is my biggest gripe with Netscape 6/Mozilla. There is no way to turn off
the HTML-style quotes in the news/mail window. All lines starting with >,
regardless of whether they really are quotes or whether someone is trying to
make ASCII art with them (a common example is something like
>>> Hello <<<
being displayed as
| | | Hello <<<
). Often arbitrary line breaks are inserted in various places, completely
messing up the message. Instead of telling users what they want, give them the
option! I've made small mentions of this in other bugs but I think it's time
that this serious user satisfaction issue be made into its own bug.

Comment 1

[Skewer]

Keywording. VERY important for nsbeta1.

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 83908 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

There's a hidden pref to turn this off.

Comment 4

[R.K.Aa.]

I believe SkewerMZ has filed the same bug once before: bug 78447
Is there any difference between that bug and this one?

Comment 5

[Skewer]

That bug's about the hidden pref (still unconfirmed, btw...). This one's about
the lack of access to end-users. The other one will probably need to be fixed first.

Comment 6

[Skewer]

I'm beginning to wonder if MailNews bugs ever get fixed. Or assigned. Or confirmed.

Comment 7

[Skewer]

This bug depends on 78447 now.

Comment 8

[scottputterman]

moving to the future milestone.  Of course mailnews bugs get looked at and
fixed. But there are over 2500 of them and less than 15 people working full time
on mail so everything has to come in their priority order.

Comment 9

[Eric Vaandering (no email)]

*** Bug 61453 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I believe that this is a dup of bug 76359. Marking as such. Please verify when
(and not before) that bug is fixed, and reopen if necessary.


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 76359 ***

Comment 11

[Skewer]

I believe it is not. This bug is about the ability to change the
quoted_graphical pref in the UI. Please pay closer attention before marking dups.

Comment 12

[wjbell]

I am able to turn off HTML style quoting in build 2001070808 but the old style
way of quoting with > are all bunched together instead of having spaces like in NS4.

The way it is now:

> quote one
>> two
>>> three

Instead of the old way:

> quote one
> > two
> > > three

Which makes it easier to read when you have a lot of levels of replies.  Can
this be fixed to have spaces in between the quotes? (>)

Comment 13

[Skewer]

wjbell: Those comments probably should be posted in bug 76359 - this is about
adding a pref in the prefs menu to set quoted_graphical without editing prefs.js
manually.

Re-summarizing to avoid any further confusion.

Comment 14

[Skewer]

Thought. Does this belong in Browser>Preferences instead of MailNews>MWFE? I'll
change this unless someone gives me a reason not to.

Comment 15

[Skewer]

Changed, then.

Comment 16

[Skewer]

-> Owner and QA for Browser/Prefs. CCing spitzer.

Comment 17

[Samir Gehani]

This is a request for a mail feature.  They own their own prefs panel and
account-specific pref panels.  Back to mail.  

Comment 18

[Sheela Ravindran]

reassign->esther since she covers this part of composition.

Comment 19

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

-->varada

Comment 20

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

comment 12:
["> > quote"]
> Which makes it easier to read when you have a lot of levels of replies.

Arg!

The quote chars are part of the sending process, while this bug is about the
viewing process. Even if we would change Mozilla to send "> > quote" (we won't,
because it would be against the f=f spec), you'd still see msgs from other
mailers that way. When the disable quote bars pref is enabled, you intentionally
see the quotes as the sender sent them.

The graphical quotes are used especially because they are easier to read and
consistent. You disable them to see the raw quote marks and then complain that
the raw quote marks (which are part of the protocol/format) are hard to read.

comment 11:
> Please pay closer attention before marking dups.

Eh, what? Back then, neither the Summary nor the initial description said that
you wanted UI. Maybe pay closer attention when filing bugs.

I don't think that any of the 4xp, mozilla1.0, nsbeta1-, nsCatFood, polish
keywords are justified.


As for the bug itself:
I proposed this (a checkbox in prefs) when I implemented the feature, and the
Netscape people decided not to have UI to switch this off, and I can understand
them (although I may not agree). The major problem was to word the label,
because the pref applies to normal plaintext only, not format=flowed (which
Mozilla sends when sending plaintext). So, it's only one of 3 cases (HTML,
format=flowed, normal plaintext) that the recognition and thus the pref applies
to and that's far too wierd for the general user to understand. We cannot make
the UI apply to the other cases as well, because that's technically practically
impossibble with the current Gecko features.

Comment 21

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

taking all of varada's bugs.

Comment 22

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

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 23

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"