223440 - Spell checker checks signature

Status: NEW

(Core :: Spelling checker, defect)

Description

[Orest]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20030925
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20030925

Running the spell checker causes the spell checker to check the signature as
well as the message body.  It also checks the HTML code of the signature.

Although I can add words from the signature into the custom dictionary, it
introduces the risk that strings added from an HTML signature will interfere
with catching genuine spelling errors in the message body.  For example, my
spell checker identifies the following as spelling errors: addr, px, lnk,
CFCFCF, and FFFFFF -- items from a small snippet of CSS in my signature file.

Furthermore, signature files are composed in advance so should likely be error-free.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create an HTML signature with arbitrarily-named CSS selectors that could be
considered spelling errors (eg: lnk, qut, adrs)
2. Compose HTML message using the HTML signature file
3. Run spell checker

Actual Results:  
Spell checker identified spelling errors in the signature as well as in the HTML
code of the signature.  

Expected Results:  
Spell check should just ignore the signature

Comment 1

[Orest]

Attachment: Example of HTML signature with CSS styles

This HTML signature will cause spell check errors on 'lnk', 'addr', 'px',
'verdana', 'georgia', 'lnk', 'CFCFCF', and 'FF'.  All these words appear in an
HTML-commented portion within the style tag.

Comment 2

[Robert Accettura [:raccettura]]

I agree, but I think this is a Thunderbird deal.

Comment 3

[Lionfire]

Just to note that this is equally applicable to non-HTML email composition and
signatures.

Comment 4

[Ray Booysen]

Confirmed on build 2003101804

Comment 5

[Anthony Howe]

This applies equally to .txt signatures and appears in build 2003111712.

Comment 6

[Oleg Sidletskiy]

*** Bug 227661 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Michael Favia]

I would agree that the spell checker shouldnt check the html/css markup of the
signature but it should in my opinion check the content of the signature. Just
because it is composed in advance doesnt mean it is error free. This could lead
to a false sense of security for those individuals who change their signatures
often with little quotes and such. Any real content that the spellchecker flags
as invalid should be added to the dict IMO.

Comment 8

[Oliver Klee]

*** Bug 270958 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 272951 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Jott]

How about adding a setting for this issue in the
tools\options\composition\composing messages

[checkbox] "Check spelling in the signature"

(next to the "check spelling before sending" setting)

Comment 11

[Kurt Huwig]

My signature contains a GnuPG fingerprint:

GnuPG 1024D/99DD9468 64B1 0C5B 82BC E16E 8940  EB6D 4C32 F908 99DD 9468

which the spell check does not like. Therefore I vote for an option to turn spell checking of signatures off.

Comment 12

[u63580]

Argh.  Sorry for the bug-spam.  Accidentally re-assigned the owner when adding my self to the CC list!  Will rectify immediately.

Comment 13

[isaac]

Confirmed for version 1.5.0.7 (20060909)

Comment 14

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 16

[Todd]

This bug is really old: 2003-10-23 .  Any chance a developer will pick up on this any time soon?  I have customers that use HTML signature blocks in 2.0.0.21.  Very frustrating to them.

Comment 17

[Andrés G. Aragoneses]

Todd, you can always hire contractors to fix it or offer bounties ( http://www.fossfactory.org/ ).

Comment 19

[Hubert FONGARNAND]

I'm note sure that the Product field should be "CORE"... but Thunderbird...

Comment 20

[Adam Hauner]

(In reply to comment #19)
> I'm note sure that the Product field should be "CORE"... but Thunderbird...

Same problem exists in Thunderbird and SeaMonkey Mail component.

Comment 21

[Lukasz Stelmach]

How about ignoring everything below "-- ". Gnus works like this.

Comment 23

[Rubén Martínez Cabello]

The same on Thunderbird 10.0.2

Comment 24

[azlinux]

The same on Thunderbird 17.0.7

Comment 25

[azlinux]

The same on Thunderbird 38

Comment 26

[Mark Foley]

Same on Thunderbird 28.6.0 (Windows). This bug has been out there since 2003 - 13 years! That tells me there is essentially no interest in fixing it. Is there any way to escalate this bug? Our whole office is considering converting from Outlook to Thunderbird, but spellchecking the signature files creates too many annoyances for users to tolerate. Conversion from Outlook is on hold until this can get resolved ... or we find a different mail client.  How hard could this be?  Lukasz Stelmach's comment 21 is acceptable, ignore below the --. Better than what is does now. Someone out in Mozilla/Tbird land, please help.

Comment 27

[Andrés G. Aragoneses]

> Is there any way to escalate this bug?

You could hire a consultant to fix it. This is how developers are paid in the opensource model.

Comment 28

[Mark Foley]

(In reply to Andrés G. Aragoneses from comment #27)
> > Is there any way to escalate this bug?
> 
> You could hire a consultant to fix it. This is how developers are paid in
> the opensource model.

Not really a useful suggestion. Neither businesses nor individuals are going to hire a consultant to fix a program like this. People are willing to make donations, as I have done for software I end up using; and hopefully subscription support services like Canonical offer with Ubuntu Advantage send some of their proceeds to LibreOffice, Thunderbird and the like, but nobody is going to pay a consultant to fix an email program. Buying Outlook is cheaper. Or using Evolution, EMclient ...

If Thunderbird wants to ever seriously penetrate the corporate world and move beyond hobbyists and techno-geeks, simple and pervasive things like the spell checker ought to be a priority for development ahead of possibly more fun stuff. With Microsoft's current "Cloud Only" direction, there is a big opportunity to greatly expand the Thunderbird user base (I have all sorts of clients looking for Outlook alternatives), but a frustrating spell checker will cause Thunderbird to be discarded as a candidate, IMHO.

One of you TBIRD developers out there ... step up to the plate!

Comment 29

[Andrés G. Aragoneses]

I have been an opensource contributor for more than 10 years so I know what I'm talking about. I've also paid external consultants to work on projects I needed to be fixed but didn't have experience on.

> nobody is going to pay a consultant to fix an email program

If that was true, then nobody would be using platforms like BountySource (there's an email program there, called Geary, which receives money for bounties.

Now, I'm not going to try to achieve to convince you anymore, neither you're doing it to me, because spamming bugzilla with these matters is completely rude (especially the part where you say "step up to the plate!", that will almost always result in people being discouraged to work on this, not encouraged). So please stop here. Thanks

Comment 30

[Mark Foley]

Well, it would be interesting to pursue this conversation off-line, but you're right, a bug report is not the place to do it. If I have time, I'll look into this myself as I believe I have a link to the upcoming release source: http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/editor/composer/nsComposeTxtSrvFilter.cpp. I'm stopping here, as suggested.

Comment 31

[jscher2000]

When I view source on a message composed in Thunderbird, the automatically inserted signature is surrounded by <div class="moz-signature"></div>.

In nsComposeTxtSrvFilter::Skip() the spellchecker bypasses <span class="moz-signature"></span>. This seems like an accidental divergence. I can't find any instances of Thunderbird using this class with a span.

Is there any reason not to modify nsComposeTxtSrvFilter::Skip() in mozilla/editor/composer/nsComposeTxtSrvFilter.cpp to skip <div class="moz-signature"> as a way to solve this bug?

Comment 32

[Anthony Howe]

That assumes an HTML formatted message.  I always send plain text email and the only delimiter for the signature is /^-- $/.

Comment 33

[jorilx]

It looks like this behaviour has been implemented at last, between TB 60 and 68?
I'm using TB 68.6.0 64bit on Linux, the spellchecker works above the signature but not INSIDE the signature (after the --). Is there a way to restore the previous behaviour?

Comment 34

[Jens Stutte [:jstutte]]

Hi Makoto, it seems in bug 1421510 we did the most recent work on nsComposeTxtSrvFilter.cpp and we do actually skip for quite some node types with articulated filters. Can I assume that this bug is thus referring to a much different state of things and can be closed?

Comment 35

[Makoto Kato [:m_kato]]

According to comment #31, < div class=moz-signature> or <pre class=moz-signature> should add skip list in nsComposeTxtSrvFilter for Thunderbird's HTML mail editor.

For plain text editor, we need another hack like bug 347666.

Comment 36

[Makoto Kato [:m_kato]]

And I don't know why we has multiple check for moz-signature in nsComposeTxtSrvFilter and mozInlineSpellChecker::ShouldSpellCheckNode.
nsComposeTxtSrvFilter uses for spellchecker dialog, so inline spellchecking won't check signature if using HTML mail editor, but spellchecker dialog that isn't used on Firefox will check signature.

Comment 37

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S4. However, the bug has 6 duplicates and 17 votes.
:jjalkanen, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 38

[Jens Stutte [:jstutte]]

Hi Wayne, I'd assume that if this is still an issue after 19 years (is it?) there are probably good reasons for it?

Comment 39

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Jens Stutte [:jstutte] from comment #38)

Hi Wayne, I'd assume that if this is still an issue after 19 years (is it?) there are probably good reasons for it?

Yes, checking the signature is still considered undesireable. (even though there have been no recent duplicate reports)

Comment 40

[xcellnt]

(In reply to jorilx from comment #33)

It looks like this behaviour has been implemented at last, between TB 60 and 68?
I'm using TB 68.6.0 64bit on Linux, the spellchecker works above the signature but not INSIDE the signature (after the --). Is there a way to restore the previous behaviour?

I second this question. I am using signatures in TB as templates and this broke my workflow. I propose to implement a toggle in Config Editor in order to restore the previous behavior and check spelling in signatures inline.