268582 - some of the message text vanishes if message direction is set to RTL

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Layout: Text and Fonts, defect)

Description

[Eyal Rozenberg]

In recent builds, messages which, upon loading, have their messages set to RTL
direction (e.g. due to the use of BiDi Mail UI - http://bidiui.mozdev.org/mail/)
are displayed with some of the text wiped out (screenshot to follow). I have not
experienced this happening otherwise. In 1.8a2  (I think) and backwards this
does not happen. It also does not happen with tbird 0.8 or 0.9 .

BTW - There is a possibility this also happens with the browser, I just haven't
tried setting dir=RTL on page load there.

Comment 1

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Attachment: screenshot (build 2004-11-04 06)

there should be more text to the right of the displayed text, in most of the
lines.

Note that selecting the missing text causes it to appear.

Comment 2

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Although this bug can be worked around - selecting the text and de-selecting it,
or scrolling down and back up - this bug is of extremely high visibility for
users who read RTL mail, therefore I suggest blocking 1.8a6 .

Comment 3

[Eyal Rozenberg]

As per David Glazman's suggestion, cc'ing dbaron.

Comment 4

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Attachment: text of the message in the screenshot

as per David Barron's request, attached the text of the message in the
screenshot. Encoding should be Windows-1255.

Comment 5

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Attachment: complete message source of the screenshot

Comment 6

[Eyal Rozenberg]

I was hoping this would be fixed before I would have to type in this
dependency...  :-(

Comment 7

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Eyal, can you help us identify the day of the regression by looking through
nightly builds at http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/ and finding
the build where it broke? This may help us identify the problem checkin faster. 

If it worked in 1.8a2 then it would be a pretty easy binary search between the
July 14 nightly build and when you reported this bug (November 9).

Comment 8

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Unfortunately, not right now, since I am about to be offline for a long while
due to various problems I won't go into... but I'll try to get this done within
a few days, maybe a week. Mano, Prog: if you can reproduce this, please oblige
Asa instead of me...

Comment 9

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

too late for 1.8a6. blocking-

Comment 10

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Not seeing the bug with 1.8a4, i.e. with build 2004-08-17 09.

Comment 11

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Seeing the bug with a build from November 1st.

Also, I've found a sure way to reproduce the bug (with BiDi Mail UI installed):

1. Open MailNews
2. Set the composition prefs to compose HTML messages (rather than text messages)
3. Set the BiDi Mail UI prefs so that the default composition direction is RTL
4. Open a new message composition window
5. Enter the text "abc" (it should be aligned to the right since the direction
is RTL)
6. Press Ctrl+Shift+X to change the direction to LTR
7. The "abc" vanishes, and the cursor appears at the left part of the window, as
at the position it should appear at after entering "abc".
8. Use the arrow keys to move left and right - the text remains invisible but
the cursor movement is appropriate
9. Switch to another window, then switch back. The text is now visible again.

Note that if instead of step 6 you change the paragraph dir using the dir
buttons in the formatting bar, the bug won't manifest itself.

Comment 12

[(no longer active)]

Mass-assigning the new rtl keyword to RTL-related (see bug 349193).

Comment 13

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #11)
> Seeing the bug with a build from November 1st.
Is this issue still relevant?

Comment 14

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Not seeing this any longer (using TB 7.0b).