When I hit reply to an email it copies the original, but puts blue lines infront to indent the quoted text - a bit like Outlook Express. But like OE this doesn't work very well. It is hard to select text, it is often difficult to put the flashing text cursor where you want to put a break, and frequently the identation goes wrong when you try to edit the original email. Instead of making it a special character, could you add the option just to insert ">>" or something in the original to indent it. And Have this treated as normal text. Also it seems that when editing emails html is always on, regardless of the plain text/html option.

over to editor

There are actually 2 bugs being reported here ... ducarroz did you open one against mail regarding the claim that html editing is always used regardless of the text/html option? marinemike@ntlworld.com in order to help you we're going to need more info like what build are you using, a release build? A nightly build? Trunk build? Branch build? (Include the build ID in the toolbar if you can), and what platform you are on. Also, can you give some specifics or perhaps a sample email that shows the problems you mention? Giving this bug to jfrancis since it deals with editing HTML mail replies.

>ducarroz did you open one against mail regarding the claim that html editing is >always used regardless of the text/html option? No but we already have an open bug for that problem...

setup: win2k moz 1.1a 2002061104 Situation :- Trying to edit an email where the original is quoted. The ">" character is inserted at the beginning of each line in the quoted email to indent the text, but these are treated specially by mozilla and displayed as a blue vertical line - maybe because html edit mode is always on. The problem maybe worse when there are several layers of indentation (multiple blue lines). If you are like me then sometimes you want to edit the orignal, ie cut bits out and write replies after each paragraph. This means selecting the orignal text and cutting it, and inserting line returns to remove the indentation in order to write my reply at the left most level. Problem :- 1. When trying to move the text cursor to a different line using the mouse click, it sometimes doesn't move. Particularily if the line is indented, but has no text (is blank). 2. As a result it can be difficult to select the original text - if the cursor doesn't move, then when you sweep the mouse and hold the button down, nothing happens. 3. Multiple blank lines which are indented can't be selected and cut all at once - you have to try to get the cursor into position then use backspace or delete to remove one line at a time. 4. The indentation can sometimes get messy when there are several layers and you are editing it. Solution ? :- Make it so that when you click on a line, the cursor "always" moves to that line. Or don't treat the ">" as special.

The days of having a half dozen milestones out in front of us to divide bugs between seem to be gone, though I dont know why. Lumping everything together as far out as I can. I'll pull back things that I am working on as I go.

[ushing these out as far as bugzilla will let me. I'll pull them back as I work on them.

Is there any aspect of this bug that is still valid? When I want to compose mail in plain text, I always get the plain text editor; I've never seen the case where an HTML editor is opened by mistake. I wonder if at some point, plain-text composition (like plain-text message display) showed a quote-bar? It now always display the ">". I have no problem navigating thru, or selecting, text in the quote. There is one specific problem still in place when typing a hard return in the middle of the quote: the second part of the line loses its quote status unless you manage to finesse typing a new ">" within the quote-span (such that it appears blue); see bug 161968. Resetting milestone on this bug.

No response from reporter or others -- marking WFM.