84161 - [RFE] Printing mail messages could be formatted better

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Backend, enhancement)

Description

[Ken Harris]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.19 i686; en-US; rv:0.9.1) Gecko/20010604
BuildID:    2001060411

When printing a mail message, I notice that:

  - the header says "mailbox:///home/...", which serves no purpose
for users (especially since it's so long it really does end with
"..." so you can't see what file it is)

  - the Subject/From/Date/To headers aren't bold and right-aligned,
like they are in the on-screen view

  - an attached image prints in-line correctly (yes!), but below
that it prints the attachment's filename, Content-Type and
Content-Encoding, which aren't shown in the message area on-screen,
and the user probably doesn't want in the average printout.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select a mail message with an attached image that Mozilla can
display, like a jpeg.
2. File -> Print
3. Look at the result...


Actual Results:  See description, above.


Expected Results:  The message headers ("Subject", etc.) should be bold and
right-aligned (so all the ":"'s line up).

It shouldn't print extraneous information, like the mailbox://
address, or the attachment's content type and encoding.


Looks great otherwise -- I was pleasantly surprised to see that
it could print the attachment, too.

Comment 1

[Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail)]

Marking as NEW and enhancement.

Comment 2

[dcone (gone)]

This is an issue for the mailnews submission of a print job.  

Comment 3

[Ken Harris]

As of 2001090705, the headers are now in a gray box, and "Subject:",
"From:", etc. are in bold, and it doesn't appear to print the
content-type/encoding for attachments it can print inline.  (The
headers aren't lined up, but that's less important.)  Very nice.

(mailbox://... is still printed, though, so I won't close this
bug just yet.)

Comment 4

[rsx11m]

(In reply to comment #3)
> (mailbox://... is still printed, though, so I won't close this
> bug just yet.)

This specific issue is handled by bug 118766.
Any other reason to keep this bug open? 

Comment 5

[rsx11m]

>   - the header says "mailbox:///home/...", which serves no purpose
> for users (especially since it's so long it really does end with
> "..." so you can't see what file it is)

This is now WFM per bug 118766 comment #10 and #11.

>   - the Subject/From/Date/To headers aren't bold and right-aligned,
> like they are in the on-screen view

Other than the headers being left-aligned, they are bold in the printout on current trunk builds, also as stated in comment #3.

>   - an attached image prints in-line correctly (yes!), but below
> that it prints the attachment's filename, Content-Type and
> Content-Encoding, which aren't shown in the message area on-screen,
> and the user probably doesn't want in the average printout.

This is bug 245787 and related.

> Expected Results:  The message headers ("Subject", etc.) should be bold and
> right-aligned (so all the ":"'s line up).

This appears to be the only part left specific to this bug.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to rsx11m from comment #5)

...

Expected Results: The message headers ("Subject", etc.) should be bold and
right-aligned (so all the ":"'s line up).

This appears to be the only part left specific to this bug.

Do we agree with the request about the alignment?

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #6)

(In reply to rsx11m from comment #5)

...

Expected Results: The message headers ("Subject", etc.) should be bold and
right-aligned (so all the ":"'s line up).

This appears to be the only part left specific to this bug.

Do we agree with the request about the alignment?

I don't think right-aligned headers would make a good print layout; that would look frayed and untidy because texts are typically left-aligned with a clear-cut vertical guidance.

Looks like we are done here. Thanks!

There might still be room for polishing, but actually, the plain vanilla print that we're currently doing from message reader is quite readable.
We have Bug 297702 for printing from composition (which is currently unformatted, no headers printed), so when we get there, that may change the way we print from message reader, too.

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot: Printing message from message reader in 91.3.2 (64-bit)

For reference, this is how we print now. 91.3.2 (64-bit)