1676040 - Message pane completely empty for certain Teams invitations; with error in Error Console

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Calendar :: General, defect)

Description

[Dalai]

Attachment: Invitation that triggers empty message pane

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0

Steps to reproduce:

The bug I'm about to report is a long-standing issue. It exists at least since Thunderbird 45. Version 38 was the last working version I tested. Now that Lightning is not an add-on anymore, it can't be fixed by modifying a file of the add-on but needs to be fixed in Thunderbird itself.

Here are the steps to reproduce the issue:

1. (Optional) Create new profile in Thunderbird (maybe use Thunderbird Portable for this)
2. Create new account in that profile; please use POP3 as protocol
3. Important: Set Thunderbird to Work Offline!
4. Switch to Calendar view
5. Import an exported invitation via "Events and Tasks" > "Import" and select the file attached to this bug report
6. Confirm the import via "Import All" button
7. Double-click on the imported event
8. Enable "All day Event" (it doesn't really matter which change is made as long as it triggers an updated mail)
9. Click "Send And Close"
10. Switch to Outbox and select the updated invitation

Actual results:

The message pane is empty and there are some errors reported in Error Console (Ctrl+Shift+J):

chrome://lightning/content/lightning-invitation.xhtml : Unable to run script because scripts are blocked internally.

XML Parsing Error: mismatched tag. Expected: </i>.
Location:
Line Number 28, Column 3:

SyntaxError: An invalid or illegal string was specified ltnInvitationUtils.jsm:109

Expected results:

Well, the message/invitation content should have been shown, obviously.

After inspecting the code mentioned by the last error it seems the function createInvitationOverlay in ltnInvitationUtils.jsm can run into an exception when fed with certain inputs. The exception is caught but the function doesn't do anything to recover from it by at least showing the invitation's text content.

I suggest to try a little harder to process the content, e.g. by trying again without the kStructPhrase flag. In the older Thunderbird version 52 where the add-on can be modified I replaced the innermost assignment to content.innerHTML with this:

try {
content.innerHTML = linkConverter.scanHTML(contentText, mode);
} catch (e) {
mode = Components.interfaces.mozITXTToHTMLConv.kURLs;
content.innerHTML = linkConverter.scanHTML(contentText, mode);
}
So that the function tries again without the kStructPhrase flag. This works fine, even with the invitation attached to this bug report.

Note that the attached invitation is a heavily stripped down version of a real invitation our company received. Imagine the surprised employees when they see nothing at all...

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Another win 7.1 issue

Comment 2

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

According to comment 0 not a theme issue I could help.

Comment 3

[Dalai]

This is NOT a theme issue. The bug occurs on any Windows system Thunderbird runs on. I haven't tested this on other platforms like Linux, so I can't tell if it's a problem there, too. But judging from the error messages appearing in the Error Console I have no reason to believe the platform makes any difference.

However, it seems that the bug title I chose is not entirely correct, depending on what is counted as part of the message pane. If the mail attachments are seen as part of the message pane, then the message pane is not completely empty because the attachments (invite.ics in this case) are still visible. But the important thing is that the invitation/event is not shown.

Please, try with the invitation attached above and see for yourself.

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I believe this was fixed through bug 1659363.

Comment 5

[Dalai]

Just tried it in Thunderbird 83.0b2, and it behaves the same; no invitation shown and same error in Error Console. In Nightly version 84.0a1 (2020-11-09-10-32-36-comm-central) the invitation is shown alright, but there are no links visible, not even as plain text. None of the several links contained in the original invitation (which I can't share for obvious reasons) is shown. I don't think this is sufficiently fixed.

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Bug 1659363 was temporarily backed on on that beta, but will be back in the next beta in the next days. The actual issue in this bug seems like bug 1666296 though. Let's resolve it there.

Comment 7

[Dalai]

Attachment: Screenshot of TB 78.5 showing empty message and Error Console

Comment 8

[Dalai]

While I agree that both invitations looks the same in Thunderbird 83 beta3, where the invitation shows fine but without any links, I'm not sure it's the same issue as in bug 1666296, at least in regards to TB 78. I can't reproduce bug 1666296 (which was reported for TB 78), I can see both the invitation text and the MS Teams link. On the other hand, I can reproduce the bug with the invitation attached above easily and every time. I'm going to add a screenshot where both the issue itself as well as the Error Console can be seen.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1325937 suggests there is an issue when using version 78

Dalai, you are still seeing this in version 78?

Comment 10

[Dalai]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #9)

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1325937 suggests there is an issue when using version 78

Dalai, you are still seeing this in version 78?

Yes, the situation in version 78 is unchanged. The relevant files in omni.ja/modules/calendar are unchanged since 78.3.2, so no surprise that the behavior is the same.

I'm still curious as to how - and when - this is going to be addressed, especially considering the (growing) number of similar bug reports and the upcoming release of the next final/ESR version. Just checked version 86.0b3 and it's even worse there. As soon as any change is made to the invitation, its contents are gone from the message pane, only an information bar about an already processed invitation and the attachment pane are still visible. No contents, no links, no way to join a Teams meeting. In short: unusable.

Comment 11

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Please make sure to re-test in latest Thunderbird Daily, because some related code changed in the last weeks. It may improve the invitations, or maybe not, but would be good to check.

Comment 12

[karuschka]

I can confirm that this is no longer a thing in the latest release of Thunderbird at least (91.3.0 on Linux). Since many Linux LTS distributions do come with old (78.x) versions of Thunderbird though, this will likely continue to come up time and again until those are phased out over time.

Comment 13

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

-> WFM per comment 12.