1114868 - Pasted text fails to appear

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Dave Jarvis]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0
Build ID: 20141127111021

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open Firefox 34 on Ubuntu Linux (64-bit), with JavaScript enabled.
2. Visit http://phys.org/news184310039.html
3. Select the following text from the web page on phys.org:
Trials in vineyards have found spraying vines increases their resistance to fungal diseases, while other tests have shown sprayed seeds germinate and grow faster than untreated seeds, and coated wood is not attacked by termites.
4. Press Control+c or Control+Insert to copy the text
5. Open Thunderbird
6. Compose a new message
7. Paste the text using Control+v or Shift+Insert



Actual results:

The pasted text did not appear in the composing window.


Expected results:

The pasted text should be visible in the composing window.

It appears as though the pasted text is pasted into an HTML table that winds up cloaking the text. A careful deletion of the (invisible) structure causes the pasted text to become visible again.

This is troublesome because the user cannot see that the text has been pasted, which could result in pasting the text several times. The recipient will see the replicated results, unbeknownst to the sender.

Also, get rid of the "Clear" button when submitting these bug reports -- I almost clicked it by mistake, which would have meant retyping all this text...

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Walt can you reproduce this?

Comment 2

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

Yes I can, using Firefox 53.0.3 and Thunderbird 52.1.1 on Ubuntu 16.04.

When I use View Source the copied and pasted text appears in the message.

I think this is the HTML table the reporter is talking about.

<div style="position: absolute; left: -99999px;"> It appears in every piece of text from that site, that I copy and paste into Thunderbird.

I worked around the problem by first pasting the text into my text editor, then copying from there into Thunderbird.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

So it sounds like not Thunderbird's fault, it's just pasting and rendering what was in the buffer.

Comment 4

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

Using Ctrl+Shift+V to Paste Without Formatting works.

I hadn't thought to try that.

Comment 5

[Chris Ramsden]

The OP failed to mention that this requires an HTML formatted message in Thunderbird. You don't see this problem if you're pasting into a plain text message in Thunderbird. 

It is to be expected that "Paste Without Formatting" works. It strips off all the HTML tag garbage. 

Alternatively, if you paste into an HTML formatted message, then edit its HTML source to change all the -99999px to 0px then the lost text appears. 

Given the way an unexpected attribution to the website appears in the pasted text, I assume there is some scripting at work when copying from that website. I agree that this is NOT a Thunderbird or Firefox problem.