208230 - message compose window couldn't interpret '\n' in the body passed by -compose commandline

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Joe]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507

mozilla compose window cannot interpret '\n' or %0A or &#10 correctly when the
body passed by -compose commandline contains the character.  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.run the following commandline
$mozilla -compose body="firstline\nsecondline" or
$mozilla -compose body=firstline%0Asecondline
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
'\n' is displayed as whitespace in the compose window launched.

Expected Results:  
display two separate lines in the body.

This problem could also be produced by calling mozMapi APIs, say, set mozilla
mail as the default mailer on windows, then call MapiSendMail with a MapiMessage
structure whose lpszNoteText field contains '\n'.
However mozilla mailto: commandline seems to interpret \n correctly by hex
encoding the character as %0A.

Comment 1

[Alonso Acuña]

I found this same problem after upgrading to 1.4Rc1. This bug is a duplicate of
207925.

Comment 2

[Alonso Acuña]

I'm using <a href="mailto:[e-mail]?body=line1%0Aline2">   and the line break
is shown as a space with all in a single line.  This worked before 1.4rc1.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Under Windows 2000, the following work as expected for me, with 1.4RC1:
   mozilla -compose body=firstline%0Asecondline
   mozilla -mail mailto:[e-mail]?body=line1%0Aline2
   mozilla mailto:[e-mail]?body=line1%0Aline2

Executing the mailto: link in Mozilla or in Opera also works; on my system, 
that's configured to execute the    mozilla -mail <url>    command.

The alternate form from the original report:
   mozilla -compose body="firstline\nsecondline"
does not work; the \n is displayed verbatim within the mail body.  I think this 
is as expected; I don't believe Windows tries to parse for escaped characters 
like that.

Alonso, which platform are you running?

Comment 4

[Joe]

I just updated my mozilla to 1.4rc1(WinXP).
%0A dosen't work for mailto either.
I do think it's reasonable that \n is displayed verbatim when using -compose.
But the problem is, there should be some way to accept multi-lines bodies by
-compose and mailto URL.
Actually, I debug the MsgComposeCommand.js, which contains the onload method of
the compose window, from the dump, '%0A' has been interpreted correctly. So I
guess the format might be lost somewhere when initializing the editor. 

Comment 5

[Joe]

*** Bug 207925 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Joe]

Sorry, I made a mistake to file the same bug twice.
since there are more comments here, I mark 207925 as a duplicate of this bug.
add cc.

Comment 7

[Jason M. Abels]

Reporter: Two people have reported WFM on win2000 and winXP. Could you please
get a screenshot that shows *both* the command line argument and the compose
window it opens, so we can see it first-hand? Also, make sure you're using the
right newline code (%, followed by numeral 0, followed by capital A)

Comment 8

[Alonso Acuña]

I just realized my problem is different but may be related to the same bug. I am
not running mozilla from the command line. I have a page that has a mailto: link
with body and now the email composer window opens but the body does not retain
the line breaks set in the link. It was working on 1.4b. 

Example:  <a href="mailto:[e-mail]?body=line1%0Aline2">Email</a>

This opened a mail with 2 separate lines, now it says "line1 line" on single line.

I am using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030529.

I also tested on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030610
and same thing happens.

Comment 9

[Joe]

Attachment: -compose commandline screenshot

Comment 10

[Joe]

Attachment: screenshot of composer launched by -compose commandline

Comment 11

[Joe]

Attachment: screenshot of mozilla mailto commandline

Comment 12

[Joe]

Attachment: screenshot of composer launched by mailto commandline

Comment 13

[Joe]

Acutally, there're two different problems here.
one is for -compose commandline, about which I cared more. it looks to me that
-compose commandline never interpret %0A or \n correctly no matter what versions
of mozilla or what platforms it was working on.

the other is about mailto URL handling, as I know, it worked well with %0A
before mozilla 1.4_rc1, there might be some regression.

Anyway, I pasted both commandline screenshots for your reference.
I'm using WinXP(Chinese version) and Mozilla 1.4 rc1 

Comment 14

[Jason M. Abels]

I wonder if this could be a problem with the chinese version of Windows. I
simply cannot reproduce this problem on 2003061008. However, that doesn't
matter, since I see screenshots and have confirmations from somebody else.

Comment 15

[Alonso Acuña]

Jason: this has nothing to do with the Chinese version of windows. I have the
problem on Linux and English version of Windows 98

Comment 16

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I think the issue is that reporter is configured to compose in HTML by default 
(as seen in the screenshots), and HTML considers newlines and spaces to be 
identical.  I guess that the data is not parsed so that newlines are converted 
to <br>, as they would be if you typed the enter key.  When I posted that it 
works for me, but I'm using plain-text mail composition.

Alonso, are you also using HTML mail by default?

Comment 17

[Alonso Acuña]

I looked in the preferences and was not able to find out if I'm using HTML mail
by default. But I probably I am. 

So I tried with this HTML mailto: link:

<a href="mailto:[e-mail]?body=line1<br>line2">Email</a>

And it does separate in two lines. That's an easy fix for the problem I had.
What I wonder is why did the behaviour changed on rc1?

Anyway I think it should interpret %0A line breaks as such even when composing
in HTML by default. Because if not someone placing a mailto: link in his website
would not know which one to use %0A or <br> and neither would not work for
everybody, which is awful.

Comment 18

[Alonso Acuña]

I was wondering if there is any standard on how line breaks are to be specified
in mailto: (either in HTML pagfe or in command line).

I feel it shouldn't interpret the "\n" as a line break in any case. When
composing in HTML %0A and <br> should both work as line breaks and \n should not
be tratead speacially since it is HTML, it should appear as "\n".

Also in the command line one should be able to specify the format in which one
is passing the information (plain or HTML) or maybe the type of email that one
wants to compose. Not that I care really I didn't even know that existed :-) 
But the mailto: needs to be fixed to handle %0A in all cases as a new line.

Comment 19

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 20

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"