199776 - composer reformats "> " to " >"...

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 114954

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Charles Swiger]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312

The mail composer will change text that the user enters (ie, typing directly) if
it looks like quoted text.  In other words, it appears impossible to compose an
email message containing lines which start with "> ".

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a mail composition window, and email yourself. 
2. Enter a few lines starting with "> ", followed by some text-- perhaps if you
were quoting someone else by hand, or perhaps because that's what you want to type.
3. Send the message.
4. The text the user typed gets re-written from "> " to " >".

Actual Results:  
From - Sat Mar 29 10:08:09 2003
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Received: from pi.codefab.com ([e-mail] [12.38.161.140])
	by pong.codefab.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h2TF7Aol007896
	(version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO)
	for <[e-mail]>; Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:07:10 -0500 (EST)
Received: from out006.verizon.net (out006pub.verizon.net [206.46.170.106])
	by pi.codefab.com (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id h2TF74aw085048
	for <[e-mail]>; Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:07:08 -0500 (EST)
Received: from mac.com ([129.44.43.88]) by out006.verizon.net
          (InterMail vM.5.01.05.27 201-253-122-126-127-20021220) with ESMTP
          id <[e-mail]>
          for <[e-mail]>; Sat, 29 Mar 2003 09:06:55 -0600
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 10:06:51 -0500
From: Chuck Swiger <[e-mail]>
Organization: The Courts of Chaos
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: [e-mail]
Subject: testing...
X-Enigmail-Version: 0.73.1.0
X-Enigmail-Supports: pgp-inline, pgp-mime
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Authentication-Info: Submitted using SMTP AUTH at out006.verizon.net from
[129.44.43.88] at Sat, 29 Mar 2003 09:06:55 -0600
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-0.7 required=8.0
	tests=NOSPAM_INC,SPAM_PHRASE_00_01,USER_AGENT,
	      USER_AGENT_MOZILLA_UA,X_ACCEPT_LANG
	version=2.44
Content-Length: 239

Chuck wrote:
 > This is a test of hand-quoting a message...
 > with several lines...
 > so that we can do a real test.

And some body text

-- 
-Chuck


Expected Results:  

From: Chuck Swiger <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Subject: testing...
[ ...headers snipped... ] ]

Chuck wrote:
> This is a test of hand-quoting a message...
> with several lines...
> so that we can do a real test.

And some body text

-- 
-Chuck


See also 114954.

Comment 1

[Christian Schmidt]

This behaviour is intended and is specified in RFC 2646 that describes
format=flowed.

The purpose of format=flowed is to extend regular text/plain with certain new
features, but in a way so that messages formatted with format=flowed looks
_almost_ as the original in clients not supporting format=flowed.

So if you type a ">" as the first character on the line, it is padding with a
leading space as you can see when you view the mail source. However, in
format=flowed-compliant clients like Mozilla the leading space isn't visible in
regular message view (in "view source" it is). Only non-compliant clients
(unfortunately, this is quite a lot, including MS Outlook) will show the leading
space.

You can disable the use of format=flowed by adding the following line to your
user.js:
user_pref("mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed", false);

Reporter: do you actually see the leading space in regular message view and not
only in the mail source? If not, this bug should be marked INVALID.

Comment 2

[Charles Swiger]

User-entered text does not have a leading space; it differs from "magic" quoted
text only by color: user typing is black, pre-quoted text is in blue.  Let me
give some specific usability examples:

#1: User replies to a message containing two sentences of about 120 characters:

This is one sentence which fits on a line.  Second sentence, which is long
enough to wrap around.

When the user hits "reply to", the text will be inserted as "magic" pre-quoted text

> This is one sentence which fits on a line.  Second sentence, which is long
enough to wrap around.

If the user is posting to Usenet or a mailing list which expects or enforces
80-col conventions, they might be used to breaking a long line by hand (*1) by
clicking after the ".", hitting "return", ">", _forward_delete_ with the hopes
of getting:

> This is one sentence which fits on a line.
> Second sentence, which is long enough to wrap around.

However, the mail composer treats the "> " on the first line differently than it
treats the user-typed "> " on the second line.  Note that this behavior causes
the user's attempt to nicely requote into:

> This is one sentence which fits on a line.
 > Second sentence, which is long enough to wrap around.

...which Mozilla itself displays as a "|" on the first line, and a " >" on the
second line.

At least if one has the "always convert to plain-text option" enabled; I haven't
changed user_pref("mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed", false) from it's default
value, although I thank you for the reference.

--------
(1): Emacs users invoke M-q (fill-paragraph) to reformat and reflow quoted text
without doing this by hand, but I can't use emacs to edit a message because of
this bug!  Any text pasted in from an external editor gets "> " morphed to " >".
 Unless I do "paste as quotation" maybe?-- haven't tried that.

Usability example #2:

User replies to a message, writes a long response, and then realizes that they
want to "reply to all" instead.  If there were a lot of receipients, one way to
do this is to "select all", "copy", switch to the orginal message they were
writing a reply to, click "reply all", and then "paste".

This causes all of the quoted text throughout the message to become treated as
user-entered text rather than as "magic" prequoted text.  I don't think that
"paste as quotation" does the right thing in this situation, either.

Basicly, the notion that the mail composition window should keep track of what's
pre-quoted and what's not during composition fails to make sense after the user
edits some pre-quoted text (or pastes in pre-quoted text).  Once the message is
sent, the text/plain vs. text/flowed decision is made: although what happens if
different receipients have different "plain text" vs. MIME mail preferences?

Anyway, when the message is sent is the time when the quotation-level checker
and thing that converts "> " to " >" should examine the message and handle the
above use cases properly.

Comment 3

[Charles Swiger]

> Reporter: do you actually see the leading space in regular message view and
> not only in the mail source? If not, this bug should be marked INVALID.

I'm not sure I replied to this question specificly.

You can see a prime example of the "> " to " >" bug causing quoting misbehavior
by looking up the original of message below from the FreeBSD mailing list
archive.  View it not just under Mozilla but under under other MUAs (including
non- RFC-2646 compliant ones)-- IMO, the quotation doesn't look right anywhere:

Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 09:25:10 -0500
From: Chuck Swiger <[e-mail]>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
	rv:1.3) Gecko/20030312
To: [e-mail]
References: <[e-mail]>
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
[ ...headers snipped for brevity... ]

John Johnson wrote:
[ ... ]
> 1.  But a funny problem I seem to have is identifying which
 > of the FTP programs to use.

The FTP command in a DOS prompt window (type 'cmd' or 'command' from 
Start->Run) is adequate.  Or get a download manager for Windows like 
GetRight.

> 2.  Do i download directly to the floppys or to my Windows
 > machine before using fdimage to format.

Download to your Windows machine.  An image of a floppy disk won't fit 
on a (already formatted) floppy disk.

> 3.  Do I download the ISO images to the Windows machine before durning
 > (as that would be better in case of an interruption during downloading.)

Download the ISO's to your Windows machine, as well.  www.nero.com has a 
free trial version of their burning software which will do the right 
thing, if you're not sure of how to burn the CD correctly.

> I just learnt that I have to start the program from the DOS environment,
 > which I will try now and give you a feedback.

OK.  Good luck.

-- 
-Chuck

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Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

It's true that the quotation will not look "right" -- by "space-stuffing" the 
lines that you have typed with an initial >, it loses its "quoteness" in the 
MUA.  Again, this is by design.

The workaround for the specific problem is either to turn off format=flowed for 
your mail (as described in comment 1 -- use   about:config   in the browser 
address bar for easy changes to preferences); or, when you wish to include text 
*as* a quote, paste it in using   Edit | Paste As Quotation

Besides the bug to which this is duped, see also bug 168420.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 114954 ***