reply_header [was Re: Setting Thunderbird email client attribution line format]

[Arthur Marsh <arthur.marsh@internode.on.net>]

Mathias Brodala wrote, On 10/09/06 11:29:

The text above was automatically generated, but is still not completely 
what I want.

> Hell Arthur.
>
> > Hi, I must be missing something obvious, but I can't find how to set
> > attribution lines in Thunderbird.
>
> An info first: if you are searching for an option, you should look in
> about:config first. When an option doesn’t exist there, it doesn’t exist.
>
> > I'd like to be able to have the
> > following appear when I reply to a message:
> >
> > On <name of day> <year>-<month>-<day>, <name email-address> wrote:
> >
> > Where is this set and where is this setting documented?
>
> Here[0] is one example:
>
> > // Change the reply header 
> > // 0 - No Reply-Text 
> > // 1 - <Author> wrote:   - Netscape 3.xx/4.xx style 
> > // 2 - On <date> <author> wrote: 
> > // 3 - user-defined string. Use the prefs below in conjuction with this. 
> > user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_type", 3); 
> > // If you set 3 for the pref above then you may set the following prefs. 
> > // The end result will be <authorwrote><separator><ondate><colon> 
> > user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote", "%s said the following"); 
> > user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_ondate", "on %s"); 
> > user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_separator", " "); 
> > user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_colon", ":");
>
>
> Regards, Mathias
>
> [0] http://www.geocities.com/pratiksolanki/old-index.html

Thanks also to Ron Johnson.

So far I have for Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.X on Linux:

Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced -> General -> Config Editor...

In the Filter box, type

reply_header

then select mailnews.reply_header_type and set its value to 3

I had also tried the QuickQuote extension which was not found when 
searching the Thunderbird extensions page, but that appeared not to work 
even after the obligatory restart of Mozilla Thunderbird.

What I still want to do is to have full control of the date format, use 
of day-of-week and email-address in addition to user name.

This is just too difficult compared to the old days of using tin for 
newsgroups and elm (or pine) for email.

I'll add a request via reportbug once I figure out why I'm getting a 
syntax error in the reportbug script )-:

Arthur.