The discussion revolves around the issue of displaying full names in emailed previous replies on a forum. jmana9 reported that usernames are shown instead of full names in emailed replies, despite the forum setting prioritizing real names. codinghorror found the email formatting unusual and jmana9 clarified that the issue persists even with the default template.
jmana9 further investigated and discovered that Gmail and Thunderbird display the plain text version of the email, rather than the HTML version, which might be related to the issue. codinghorror expressed surprise at this behavior.
Regarding the main issue, jmana9 asked if showing real names in previous responses is likely to be changed in a future release. codinghorror replied that for full HTML emails, the site settings should be respected, implying that a fix might be implemented in the future.
The users of my forum want real names pretty much everywhere. I prioritize real names, but when previous replies are sent by email, only the usernames appear:
I’m on v2.2.0.beta1 +4 and I don’t think I’ve modified any part of the previous replies template - I don’t actually know where I would do that. That screenshot was taken from Gmail, and it looks the same to my eyes in Thunderbird.
It seems odd to me that both my Gmail account (in IE and Firefox) and a different email account in Thunderbird display the plain text version over the HTML. I receive lots of HTML email messages in both places. Using the Gmail app on my iPad, it displays the HTML version.
I temporarily removed the customizations I made to the User Posted Email Template to see if maybe something I did there was to blame. However, Gmail still did not display HTML even with the defaults. Neither did the account I use in Thunderbird.