162247 - Text line beginning with space gets another space

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 141983

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Ulf Dunkel]

When writing mails in the plain ASCII text editor, the editor adds another space
to in front of all lines which start with space(s).

Example:
This line starts at position 0 with normal text.
 This line has been startet at position 0 with a space.
 Like this one, it will be received with 2 (two) leading spaces.

Comment 1

[Niklas Dougherty]

I haven't confirmed this, but it is the famous American typewriter typography.
It is not used anywhere else, and is generally abhorred by typographers and
designers, since it creates ugly "rivers" in the text flow. If there really was
any truth to this practice, typographers would kern their fonts accordingly (the
period-space pair). But they don't (actually, it is kerned to 1 1/4 em, which is
the true spacing).

Also note that HTML naturally squeezes multiple white space to one single space.

Comment 2

[Ulf Dunkel]

Hi [e-mail].

I wonder if you talk about the same problem. When I write a mail, I want to
decide myself where and HOW MANY spaces are placed in front of text lines.

This strange behaviour seems to be similar to that which forced the mail editor
to add empty lines in quoted text, etc. (fixed already).

When I write a list and format paragraphs by pressing [Return] and entering
spaces in front of list text lines, I want it to remain the same way that I
entered it.

This form here does not show the bug. Let me show it another way:
* I write a list with leading asterisks.
* When a list entry has more than one text line,
  I press [Return] and enter TWO spaces.

Mozilla formats this example like this: 

* I write a list with leading asterisks.
* When a list entry has more than one text line,
   I press [Return] and enter TWO spaces.
  ^

What I am talking about is the naughty single space which is added to ALL text
lines which start with spaces.

Comment 3

[Robin Whittle]

This is surely the same problem as bug 141983 I reported in May, rather than a 
dependency.  So I suggest the owner of this bug mark it as a duplicate of 
141983.

It affects email when it is sent and also when it is saved to draft.  So if you 
write a message with an indented line, save it to draft, re-open it, save it to 
draft, re-open it and then send it, there will be 3 extra spaces!

Netscape's supposedly totally amazing 7.0 browser has this problem as well.  

If this plain text message editor was a simple text editor, it wouldn't be hard 
to get it right or fix it, but it is a specialised case of a complex HTML 
editor, when for email, there are a few things which need to be done which are 
not at all part of HTML and virtually nothing about HTML is needed for plain 
text.

The only time I tried to find and fix problems in the Mozilla source, a week of 
my life went to no good purpose, so I just report bugs - rather than try to fix 
them.

  - Robin

Comment 4

[Ulf Dunkel]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 141983 ***

Comment 5

[Vedran Miletic]

v