195938 - too easy to corrupt wrapping (flow) cues (i.e. remove f=f trailing spaces) in quoted text

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[John Belmonte]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.7 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20021226 Debian/1.2.7-6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021210 Debian/1.2.1-3

When using flowed text mode, it is too easy to accidentally remove the trailing
spaces at the end of each line in the course of editing your message.  Each
trailing space removed causes in a line break that the writer did not intend. 
The result can be a very ugly message, as the nice line flowing is interrupted
by meaningless line breaks.  This happens to me on just about every email I
write, probably because I review the mail and make little changes several times
before sending it.  It's so easy to accidentally delete these trailing spaces
that you can't see.

I submit that the flowed text mechanism (the trailing spaces at the end of the
line) is an implementation detail that should not be exposed to the user. 
Composer should silently keep track of line and paragraph flow just as any other
word processer does, and only upon sending out the message should it append the
trailing spaces where necessary.  This way the user has no chance to corrupt the
flow information.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start a new message
2. Type a long line until it has wrapped onto a second line.  Keep typing a few
more words and then hit ENTER.
3. Move the cursor back to the end of the first line.  There will be a trailing
space character-- delete it.
4. Send the message to your self

Actual Results:  
An unflowed line.

Expected Results:  
A flowed line.

Comment 1

[Kenneth Herron]

Is this still an issue with current builds? I've been using thunderbird for
email for over a year, and I've never encountered a problem like this.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

This is easy to encounter if you're editing the quoted text -- in that case, the 
EOL spaces can be removed by editing, and potentially screw up the flowed 
display of the quote.  (It also means that spaces can be introduced where they 
shouldn't, either by the user or in the original mail, causing reflow where it 
wasn't intended.)  I don't know if that's what reporter was talking about, 
however.

For the plain just type in, it's easy to lose the flow information if you save 
as draft and then reopen -- that's bug 155622 (see also bug 160970).  I don't 
think it's possible to simply edit out the spaces; they're handled internally.

Comment 3

[Peter Lairo]

So the summary might better be:

Possible to accidentally add/remove format=flowed wrapping cues (extra spaces at end of lines) when manually editing quoted portion of message (replies)

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

OK, since reporter hasn't chimed in otherwise, I'll agree; updating the summary and confirming.

Comment 5

[Peter Lairo]

I don't consider this bug to be "minor". I re-edit previously stored messages very often (Edit Draft, Edit as New), and encounter this bug daily. It make messages hard to read and ugly. A very visible Thunderbird deficiency IMO.

Nominating for Thunderbird 2.0

Comment 6

[Scott MacGregor]

looks like we haven't gotten any traction on this.

Comment 7

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Is there a case this happens with current trunk builds?

Comment 8

[guanxi]

IIRC, the whole point of F=F is to preserve backward compatibility with manual line breaks (i.e., where the writer chooses where each line wraps, usually by pressing Enter). The proposed solution of adding spaces at the end of each line would break that compatibility. 

If we don't need that compatibility, then we might as well wrap text like Notepad or most word processors -- only insert hard returns at the end of each paragraph, and wrap lines at the right margin of the window.

Which leads me to this conclusion (and I like F=F; I write most e-mails in VIM and copy them into TB): F=F and the manual linebreaks are used by a very small geeky minority; I imagine they are relics of an age when Mozilla products were made by geeks and for geeks. For the vast majority of TB users, they offer no value and create problems, such as this bug.

By default, F=F should be disabled in the Compose window, which should work like Notepad (auto-wrap at right margin, line breaks at the ends of paragraphs). F=F can still be a hidden pref for those of us who like it, and of course we should be able to display F=F e-mails.