1187572 - BiDi Mail UI direction auto-detection busted by recent(ish) changes

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[Avner Falk]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:39.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/39.0
Build ID: 20150630154324

Steps to reproduce:

Installed BiDi Mail UI. Composed and sent messages. Received messages.


Actual results:

This add-on often reverses the display direction of received and sent messages. Whereas Thunderbird is at Version 38.1, this add-on, which is vital to those of us who compose messages in right-to-left languages, is at Version 0.97 and has not changed in over three years. This add-on is user-unfriendly and requires many manipulations to get messages to display correctly before and after they are sent.


Expected results:

This add-on should enable one to write messages in both directions, while keeping the display direction of received and sent messages.

Comment 1

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Avner, unless you're suggesting there's a bug in Thunderbird itself which causes this behavior you're seeing, this bug belongs on www.mozdev.org/bugs/ .

Comment 2

[Eyal Rozenberg]

This bug manifests with comm-central TB nightlies starting from 2015-02-06. The 2015-02-05 nightly still seems to work fine.

Comment 3

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Relevant commit seems to be:

Bug 1129692 - Update comm-central for PLDHashTable changes in bug 1050035, r=rkent
author	Nicholas Nethercote <[e-mail]>
Wed, 04 Feb 2015 15:22:43 -0800
changeset 17447	1037eb322c0f
parent 17446	437729d16353
child 17448	baa8c010ffb3
push id	10748
push user	[e-mail]
push date	2015-02-05 18:59 +0000
Treeherder	results
reviewers	rkent
bugs	1129692, 1050035

Comment 4

[aleth [:aleth]]

I'm not sure exactly what the issue is here, but maybe the TB message display should use unicode-bidi: -moz-plaintext to better handle e.g. mixed English/Hebrew, similar to bug 955030 for chat.

Comment 5

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

I also don't know what the issue is. Maybe Eyal or Aryx can check if unicode-bidi: -moz-plaintext would help.

Comment 6

[aleth [:aleth]]

(In reply to aleth [:aleth] from comment #4)
> I'm not sure exactly what the issue is here, but maybe the TB message
> display should use unicode-bidi: -moz-plaintext to better handle e.g. mixed
> English/Hebrew, similar to bug 955030 for chat.

I don't think it should take an addon to correctly display email, whatever the language. Having an addon to expose additional bidi UI options is fine.

Note unicode-bidi support is fairly recent (gecko 25 iirc).

Comment 7

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

This is caused by bug 1083281 / http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/5dcd284d63af

From the error console:

Security Error: Content at mailbox:///C:/Mozilla/Debugging/Thunderbird/Profiles/unstable/central/Test-central-en/Mail/Local%20Folders/Inbox?number=16725476 may not load or link to chrome://bidimailpack/content/quotebar.css.

Security Error: Content at mailbox:///C:/Mozilla/Debugging/Thunderbird/Profiles/unstable/central/Test-central-en/Mail/Local%20Folders/Inbox?number=16725476 may not load or link to chrome://bidimailpack/content/direction-autodetection.css.

Will registering the stylesheets as contentaccessible in the chrome.manifest fix the issue? Reason for contentaccessible: https://www.mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=22775

Comment 8

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Thanks Aryx; I don't know why I didn't see these errors on the console, maybe it's the result of some other extension acting up.

Now, how would I even add quoteBar.css to chrome.manifest, at all (contentaccessible or otherwise)? It's not part of the skin; it's not a directory; and it's not a locale. I don't think I can mark it as a style, since it doesn't apply to any relevant XUL.

Paenglab: I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Where should "unicode-bidi: -moz-plaintext" be used, and how is that relevant?

Comment 9

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Ok, it looks like this is resolved by proper use of a "contentaccessible=yes" alias. Here's the diff segment:

-content bidimailpack jar:chrome/bidimailpack.jar!/content/bidimailpack/ contentaccessible=yes
+content bidimailpack-for-message-html jar:chrome/bidimailpack.jar!/content/bidimailpack/ contentaccessible=yes
 content bidimailpack jar:chrome/bidimailpack.jar!/content/bidimailpack/

the same-name contentaccessible=yes version worked (or, perhaps, the restriction wasn't enforced?) until TB 38.

Comment 10

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Oh, see the MozDev bug page for a test build:
https://www.mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=26053

Comment 11

[Eyal Rozenberg]

So, this was resolved with BiDi Mail UI 0.9.8 .

Comment 12

[Avner Falk]

I beg to differ. This add-on still reverses the display direction of received and sent messages and displays outgoing replies in the opposite direction of the one set in its options.  A BiDi Mail UI 1.0.0 which does everything it is supposed to do correctly is urgently called for. Thanks.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Avner, do you still see this issue in a current version?