20195 - [mozTXTToHTMLConv] Recognize ASCII-art and -tables (display some paragraphs in fixed width font when plaintext is viewed in variable width font)

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Backend, enhancement)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

If the user chooses a proportional font for reading plain text mail, every
preformatted text gets messed up.

The IMO best proposal from both n.p.m.mail-news and alt.ascii-art was to scan
after more than one space in sequence (and propably [TAB]s) inside the text (not
to trigger on a simple indention).

However, this should be done paragraph based (i.e. at recognition, the whole
paragraph is turned into <pre>) to avoid a switch of the font family inside a
paragraph. This in not easy to to with libmime, which is completely line-based.

Comment 1

[rhp (gone)]

Ben,
If you want to tackle this stuff thats great, but I'm just neck deep in work
right now and feeling quite doomed.

- rhp

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I just wanted to document this RFE. HELP WANTED.

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Working on it. Taking bug.

It mostly works, but looks a bit silly in some cases, because I can switch the
only the rest of a paragraph to monospace, if I detect a line being ASCII-Art,
not the previous part, for the reasons given above.

Will attach patch to bug 46993, when done.

Comment 4

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

/

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Moving out to M20, out of pity for poor Netscape :). Hope, it won't rott.

Comment 6

[David Krause]

CC'ing mpt.  We need this so that all his art will look good. :)

Comment 7

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Recommend wontfix. This is an AI-complete problem, and I don't think Mozilla 
should try to solve it.

For example, you will have false positives for:
* people who use two spaces between their sentences
* people (like me) who preserve original horizontal alignment of parts of quoted
  lines when splitting a quoted line.

And you will have false negatives for:
* the common GIFSCII conversion type of art (i.e. bitmaps converted to ASCII),
  which consists of a solid rectangular block of characters chosen because of
  their various darknesses (no space characters involved)
* any other art which happens not to have more than one space in sequence
  anywhere -- e.g. smileys, other one-liner art 8//=/\-, and so on ...

It would make far more sense, IMO, just to provide a keyboard shortcut for 
toggling between fixed-width and proportional-width text, like Pegasus Mail does.

Comment 8

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Update: I had a working patch, but lost it :-(((. See bug 46993 for details.

Comment 9

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

for mozTXTToHTMLConv

Comment 10

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Changing personal priorities. Giving away most of my bugs :-( (reassigning to
default owner).

I will still track these bugs closely. If you need my input, feel free to ask me.

New owner: Please do *not* close these bugs (as WONTFIX or whatever you may
find) unless they are fixed. Rather, reassign to <[e-mail]>, if you
don't want to work on them.

Comment 11

[neeti]

reassign to [e-mail]

Comment 12

[benc]

mass assignment of text->HTML bugs to MailNews w/ esther as QA.

Comment 13

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Moving a bunch of mozTXTToHTMLConv bugs into Core / MailNews Backend to live 
with their bretheren.

Comment 14

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"

Comment 15

[Michael Salem]

This bug continues and is a nuisance. I sometimes look at pages with electronic circuit diagrams in "ASCII art". Internet Explorer has ALWAYS displayed them correctly (possibly because people tweak them for IE); Firefox NEVER has. Example: 
http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_smpsfaq.html
Seek
"3.3) Description of typical flyback type SMPS" 
(anyone interested in switch-mode power supplies might find the page interesting in its own right!).

Workaround, obviously: render page with IE

Comment 16

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Michael, this bug is about Thunderbird, not Firefox.

Comment 17

[Michael Salem]

Sorry for reporting for Thunderbird rather than Firefox, had searched Bugzilla and not checked the report I'd found was for right component.

Worse, the bug is due to my configuration; I'll report it here in case anyone finds it in a search; it can happen in any software. When displaying "ASCII art", the "picture" is garbled. Cause: although I'd initially specified a fount for monospaced text (in Firefox, but could happen anywhere), it had been changed during some long-ago update to Alba, the first alphabetically. Result is garbled picture in ASCII text with incorrect spacing, obviously.

Comment 18

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Matthew Paul Thomas from comment #7)
> Recommend wontfix.

+1

Comment 19

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by ffxbld-merge:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/ffe9aa88c27a
[fenix] For https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20195 - Adds tabsTray allowScreenshotsInPrivateMode check (https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/pull/20203)