212008 - Text editing problems - alternating indentation behaviour

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: Editor, defect, P5)

Description

[David Campbell]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030707
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030707

There are still major editing problems in mail composition.

I here attempt to provide a reproducible scenario of how to produce one where
indentation happens that doesn't seem correct.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open the attached html in composer
2.Select the content with CTRL-A and copy it with CTRL-C
3.Open a new message window
4.Select anything there with CTRL-A
5.Paste the previously copied content in there
6.Click the cursor to the beginning of point 2, right before the number 2.
7.Press enter.

Actual Results:  
A line is inserted where you would expect, but point 2 has now become indented.
 I would not have expected it to be indented, given that it was not indented before.
Also, if you press enter again, it becomes not indented, and then if you press
it again, it again becomes indented.  The behaviour alternates.

Expected Results:  
I would expect that pressing enter when the cursor is positioned before a
paragraph would open up a new paragraph with identical indentation.

Comment 1

[David Campbell]

Attachment: html used to reproduce this problem

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Do you get the same problem pasting into Composer, or just into mailcompose?

Comment 3

[David Campbell]

Yes, same in composer.

I should have checked there first, but I experienced the problem in mail message
composition.

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Over to Editor.  Please check the other bug you filed also and reassing as
needed (make sure to check the "Reassign bug to owner and QA contact of selected
component" radio button).

Comment 5

[Kathleen :Brade]

confirming; I see the problem in Netscape 7.1 on MacOSX (based on mozilla 1.4).

This testcase is filled with MS-isms and probably wouldn't validate as html.

Requested qawanted to get a more minimal testcase.

Comment 6

[Bob Firth]

Attachment: reduced testcase

Comment 7

[Bob Firth]

The style declarations say that the paragraph should have a left margin of 25
pixels, and the first line should be indented -25 pixels (relative to the
margin). So the paragraph should have the first line at normal indentation, and
following lines at 25 pixels.

When the <br> is added into the current <p> what was previously the first line
(specially alinged) text becomes the second line of the paragraph, which should
indeed be indented to 25 pixels. I don't know if that counts as a bug.

It's for someone else to say what the correct behaviour should be. Put the <br>
before the <p>? Only if there are indentation tags present?

The "alternating" behaviour makes sense to me, according to the CSS indentation
tags for the paragraph.

Comment 8

[Bob Firth]

Attachment: actual bug

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030820 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. click cursor to the begining of the line
2. press enter
3. type something anywhere in that line (or delete a character)

Actual Results:
Text not aligned until line changes

Expected Results:
Text incorrectly aligned until line changes.

Similarly:
if you backspace the empty first line the second line will remain 'indented'
until it is altered.

Comment 9

[Bob Firth]

Above bug added as bug 217281 since it's not really the same as this bug.

Sorry for making a bit of a mess. If someone can remove my previous
post/attachment that would be tidier.

Comment 10

[Andrew Schultz]

originally, the html looks like this:
<p style="margin-left: 18pt; text-indent: -18pt;">2.</p>

after pressing enter once:
<p style="margin-left: 18pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><br>
2.</p>

and twice:
<p style="margin-left: 18pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-left: 18pt; text-indent: -18pt;">2.</p>

Comment 11

[Bob Firth]

I think it is clear what happens here is mainly due to an odd CSS specification rather than incorrect behaviour of the program. Andrew describes what is the normal behaviour for pressing enter inside <p> tags, the alternating indenting only happens because of the text-indent specification.

Unless anyone can suggest a better behaviour for composer (such as not allowing an empty line as the first line of a <p> with the text-indent property set) then this bug should be resolved invalid.

Comment 12

[David Campbell]

But surely mozilla should handle things in a way that gives the end user a sensible experience.

Leaving this alternating indentation issue leaves the user with a bad taste in their mouth concerning the quality of Thunderbird.

Isn't there a way of handling this so it doesn't happen?

Comment 13

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Out of curiousity... What does Word do when similar paragraph styling is used in this situation?

Comment 14

[David Campbell]

If I load the HTML used in this case into OpenOffice, it behaves the way I would expect, and doesn't do the alternating indentation that thunderbird does.

Comment 15

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

But does it carry over the styling?

Comment 16

[Bob Firth]

openoffice.org does carry the styling over but pressing enter always starts a new paragraph. You can only get a <br> by pushing shift+enter.

This in my mind makes sense but seems to be different from how enters are handled by composer. I don't know anything about what Word does.

Comment 17

[Jens Stutte [:jstutte]]

Bulk-downgrade of unassigned, >=5 years untouched DOM/Storage bugs' priority and severity.

If you have reason to believe this is wrong, please write a comment and ni :jstutte.