1433942 - Composer gobbles newlines after rewrapped quoted text

Status: REOPENED

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Tristan Miller]

Attachment: Sample e-mail foo.eml

If you rewrap quoted lines in the composer and then send or save the message, the first newline after the quotation disappears.

Reproducibility: Always

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open the attached e-mail foo.eml and hit reply.  The composer window appears.
2. Position the cursor at the end of the first paragraph of quoted text. Hit Enter a couple times, type "foo", and press Enter.
3. Select the first paragraph of quoted text, plus the following newline, and press Ctrl+R to wrap it.  The composer window should now appear as in the attached screenshot.
4. Save the message as a draft, or send the message.
5. Examine the sent message in the draft or sent folder, or in the inbox of the receiving account.

Expected results:
6. The message should appear as it does in the composer window screenshot, with a blank line between the first paragraph of quoted text and the "foo" paragraph.

Observed results:
6. There is no blank line between the first paragraph of quoted text and the "foo" paragraph.

Comment 1

[Tristan Miller]

Attachment: Screenshot showing composer window just before sending the reply

Comment 2

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Yes, I can reproduce this with TB 52 and TB 60 Daily. I'd say that goes onto the long is of problems with Rewrap. Have you tried just do rewrap the first line:

> Conclusion + Abstract still missing. I could write one of them, but there are still some open questions for me.

That doesn't appear to work at all.

Comment 3

[Tristan Miller]

Yes, there are plenty of other problems with Rewrap, including its refusal to rewrap some lines.  I think a lot of these are already covered in other bug reports.

The particular case of the composer eating newlines after rewrapped text is a problem that's unique and common enough that I thought I'd raise a separate issue.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Tristan Miller from comment #3)
> Yes, there are plenty of other problems with Rewrap, including its refusal
> to rewrap some lines.  I think a lot of these are already covered in other
> bug reports.

Quite so https://mzl.la/1OhgRLb - there's even an old meta bug 192905 :(

Comment 6

[Tristan Miller]

Still reproducible in Thunderbird 60.6.1.

Comment 7

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

It doesn't get fixed by magic, so if you don't see any activity here, it will still not work.

Comment 9

[Joseph Picone]

In general, in plain text mode, editing of quoted text doesn't work properly. I can't figure out if it has to do with how the original text was sent. It seems like some cellphones send text that behaves strangely when edited in plain text mode.

For example, if I want to edit the quoted text, inserting a quote character doesn't work. It wraps the text in a strange way and often leaves a blank line with only the quote character. Rewrapping the text doesn't work.

This has been a problem for a long time - since v90 or so. It really needs to be fixed since it makes plain text mode less useful.

-Joe

Comment 10

[Tristan Miller]

No longer reproducible with Thunderbird 115.2.0.

Comment 11

[Tristan Miller]

Still reproducible sometimes with Thunderbird 115.5.0. I can't figure out how to trigger the bug, though. Most of the time, newlines after quoted text are preserved, but under some conditions they still get gobbled.

Comment 12

[Joseph Picone]

This bug still persists in v115.5.1.

Here is a video demonstrating one of the problems:

https://isip.piconepress.com/tmp/mozilla/

In general, text editing in reply mode has a lot of formatting issues like this. It makes it very tedious to do inline replies to a message.

I am happy to provide more information about this bug.

Comment 13

[Joseph Picone]

https://isip.piconepress.com/tmp/mozilla/

I thought I might be able to upload a video. There are mov and mp4 videos at this URL.

-Joe

Comment 14

[betterbird.project+14]

This is not necessarily related to rewrap. In bug 1787577 another scenario is described where inconsistencies with empty lines are provoked by hitting <enter> after a quote. The empty lines are also lost on saving/sending. Besides, this bug here was filed in the wrong component, this is a Core::Editor bug.

Comment 15

[betterbird.project+14]

Please read bug 1787577 comment #11 for an analysis. In brief, the disappearing empty lines were caused by bug 1288911 (Mozilla 53, backported to Mozilla/TB 52). Since bug 1858071 (Mozilla 123) this issue should happen anymore since the Mozilla editor handles the HTML introduced in bug 1288911 correctly now.

Please convince yourself in TB 123 beta that the bug isn't present any more.

Comment 16

[Tristan Miller]

The bug still occurs sometimes for me in Thunderbird 115, but I can't figure out how to reliably reproduce it, and I don't want to switch to a beta for long-term daily use (which is what I'd have to do in order to have a chance of triggering it). So I'm afraid I won't be able to fulfill the needinfo request at this time. When Thunderbird 123 is released (or if the fix gets backported to any official release) and I have a chance to use it for a while, I'll be happy to report back. (Or failing that, if someone can give me steps to reliably reproduce the issue, I could test with 123 beta right away.)