Closed
Bug 307112
Opened 19 years ago
Closed 19 years ago
Whitespace (newline) disappears when sending a reply
Categories
(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
RESOLVED
DUPLICATE
of bug 314213
Thunderbird2.0
People
(Reporter: jefdriesen, Assigned: mscott)
Details
Attachments
(2 files)
Screenshot of the message in the composer window.
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050904 Thunderbird/1.4 ID:2005090406
Create a very simple message which contains only the text below and send it to
yourself (in the plaintext format):
Some text on line 1
Some text on line 2
Some text on line 3
Some text on line 4
Now create a reply to this message and add some text halfway the original
message (e.g. between line 2 and 3, which does split the quote in two parts). The
body of the reply will look like this: (save to drafts folder and look at the
message source)
<body>
Jef Driesen wrote:
<blockquote cite="..." type="cite">
Some text on line 1 <br>
Some text on line 2 <br>
</blockquote>
This is the first part of the reply<br>
<blockquote cite="..." type="cite">
Some text on line 3 <br>
Some text on line 4 <br>
</blockquote>
This is the second part of the reply<br>
</body>
In the composer window, the quoted text and the replies are nicely separated by
some whitespace (to increase readability). So far so good. Now send this new
message to yourself again (also in plaintext format). Check the message (in your
send folder) and you will see all the whitespace is gone:
Jef Driesen wrote:
> Some text on line 1
> Some text on line 2
This is the first part of the reply
> Some text on line 3
> Some text on line 4
This is the second part of the reply
This kind of message, without any withespace, is very difficult to read. With
Thunderbird 1.0.6, there are real empty lines inserted like below:
Jef Driesen wrote:
> Some text on line 1
> Some text on line 2
This is the first part of the reply
> Some text on line 3
> Some text on line 4
This is the second part of the reply
This behaviour is certainly breaking the WYSIWYG concept in my opinion and
should be fixed. And I'm not the only one seeing this behaviour. Take a look at
the discussions here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=279526
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=297219
http://groups.google.be/group/netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news/browse_frm/thread/4281ba6d7bc667b5/
Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
I tested with a new profile and no extensions installed.
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Reporter | |
Comment 1•19 years ago
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Reporter | |
Comment 2•19 years ago
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Comment 3•19 years ago
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Those <br> tags that appear in the HTML message source aren't putting a "blank
line" in their position; they're simply forcing the HTML to break. The
whitespace between the quoted and unquoted parts of this text in the compose
window is provided by CSS styling.
Try adding this to your userContent.css file (in <yourprofile>\chrome --
create the file if it doesn't exist):
.moz-text-flowed blockquote
{ /* provide a little spacing between quoted and unquoted text
for text/plain;format=flowed message display */
margin-top: 1em !important;
margin-bottom: 1ex !important;
}
That's not a perfect solution, since if there are any blank lines between the
quoted and unquoted text, the margin will make the space between the sections
look wider than necessary.
There has been a relatively recent change in this area -- see bug 144998.
However, the previous behavior certainly wasn't WYSIWYG in any meaningful way,
and clearly was broken. But I think that when you are explicitly converting
HTML to plain, you lose any claim to WYSIWYG anyway.
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Reporter | |
Comment 4•19 years ago
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I already found out that those <br> tags have no influence.
You have a point about the conversion from HTML to plaintext. However, I think
the plaintext version should at least resemble the html version as close as
possible.
Most of my recipients are using Outlook (Express) and cannot apply the
userContent.css customization. To make the text easily readable I have to add
all the whitespace manually (which is quite some work and easy to forget). But
this extra added whitespace takes up a lot of (wasted) space in the composer
window now. And when sending in html, there is no reason to add the extra
whitespace because the message looks fine without. Imagine sending a message
with both a plaintext and html part. Now always one of the two will look 'messed
up'.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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Reporter | |
Comment 5•19 years ago
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Sorry, changed the status of my bug by accident.
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
Resolution: FIXED → ---
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Comment 6•19 years ago
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Rather than change the CSS to pad out the messages you view, perhaps the better
solution is to change the CSS to reduce the margin & padding in the messages you
compose. Unfortunately, there's no simple way I know of to distinguish between
the contents of the message compose window and those of the message display
window (having the compose window use <body class="moz-html-compose"> would be
a nice touch), but given the overly large margins, maybe it doesn't matter that
much. Try this instead, in userContent.css:
blockquote
{
padding-top: 2px !important;
padding-bottom: 2px !important;
margin-top: 0 !important;
margin-bottom: 0 !important;
}
Then when you open the compose window, you'll have the tiniest bit of padding
between the quote and the typed text -- too small to confuse that spacing for an
actual newline in the text of the message. If you enter a newline to space it
out, that newline gets included in the conversion to plain text.
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Assignee | |
Comment 7•19 years ago
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Chase, isn't this what you were talking to me about in the office yesterday?
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Comment 8•19 years ago
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(In reply to comment #7)
> Chase, isn't this what you were talking to me about in the office yesterday?
Yes, from the initial description it sounds exactly like what I'd seen and
talked to you about.
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Comment 9•19 years ago
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Confirmed using
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20050924 Thunderbird/1.4
ID:2005092407
Likely fallout from bug 144998 if you ask me.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
OS: Windows 2000 → All
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Comment 10•19 years ago
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(In reply to comment #9)
> Likely fallout from bug 144998 if you ask me.
More like, it's a bug that's become visible now that 144998 has been fixed.
Where there used to be an inconsistent number of blank lines between quoted and
unquoted text, there are now exactly as many blank lines as the user types in.
Seems like a step forward to me.
I don't know how other people feel about it, but now that I've seen how the CSS
from comment 6 works, I'm going to keep it in my profile. I've modified it
slightly:
====
blockquote[type=cite]
/* type=cite => quote within mail; xref bug 45268, bug 183219 */
{
padding-top: 2px !important;
padding-bottom: 2px !important;
margin-top: 2px !important;
margin-bottom: 0 !important;
}
blockquote > pre
/* quoting a non-f=f plain-text message nests a <pre> within the quote */
{
margin-top: 0 !important;
margin-bottom: 0 !important;
}
====
It might be a good thing to incorporate something like this into the default CSS
for Thunderbird, as a fix for this bug. (See also bug 127787 comment 8 & 9.)
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Reporter | |
Comment 11•19 years ago
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(In reply to comment #10)
> It might be a good thing to incorporate something like this into the default CSS
> for Thunderbird, as a fix for this bug. (See also bug 127787 comment 8 & 9.)
This would be a solution for Thunderbird users only. But all other users (with
OE or whatever) would still see those messages without any space. And i think
it's important to produce messages which look good/readable in any client.
Suppose you were an OE,... user. Would you consider switching to a mail client
that is sending you all the time such 'difficult to read' messages? I don't
think so. And I'm also very curious about how all Thunderbird 1.0.x users (where
this bug is not present) are going to react when all their send plaintext
messages will look worse after the upgrade. At least in my personal opinion, the
current behaviour will damage Thunderbird popularity.
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Comment 12•19 years ago
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(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #10)
> > It might be a good thing to incorporate something like this into the default
> > CSS for Thunderbird, as a fix for this bug.
>
> This would be a solution for Thunderbird users only. But all other users (with
> OE or whatever) would still see those messages without any space.
No, you have misunderstood my comment. The latest CSS I suggested makes it so
that *when you compose* there is no margin and minimal padding -- that way, you
don't think that there are blank lines where there aren't. I said as much in
comment 6. How about actually trying it out before reacting?
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Reporter | |
Comment 13•19 years ago
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(In reply to comment #12)
Yes, I tried the code from your comment. And I also understand what the CSS is
doing. It removes those 'virtually' blank lines between the quote and the reply.
Like you said, there are now exactly as many blank lines as the user types in.
So far I agree with you.
But even with your CSS code, I still have to add extra newlines *manually*. (The
only difference for me, is that I'm not going to forget to do that now.) After
the conversion to plain text, this manually added whitespace is preserved. So
the result will look okay in every email client. But my point is that I think
the whitespace should be added automatically. Or am I the only one who thinks
there should be some separation between quotes and replies?
What you are proposing is removing margin/padding from the html elements. But
that margin/padding is there for a reason: to separate two pieces of text, even
if there is no explicit newline between them. That's why you are not going to
add an extra <br> tag between two paragraphs, because every browser I know, will
use margins/padding for that. But in a plain text version, there is no such
thing as margin/padding. The only way to separate two pieces of text now, is to
add a newline. (In Thunderbird we could also use CSS for displaying here, but
that's not true for other email clients. And I prefer not to send messages which
are difficult to read, no matter what email client is used at the other side.)
And what in the case a message is send as both html and plaintext? Should i add
extra whitespace (now there is too many whitespace in html) or not (now there is
not enough whitespace in the plaintext)?
I hope I made myself more clear now. Thanks for your time anyway.
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Assignee | |
Comment 14•19 years ago
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putting in the 2.0 bucket for discussion.
Target Milestone: --- → Thunderbird2.0
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Comment 15•19 years ago
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CSS on the viewer is no solution, because the msg source is already messed up, local CSS rules won't help my recipients, which are my problem.
I filed a fresh bug about this, with more cases considered.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 314213 ***
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago → 19 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
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Description
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