231562 - Save as (template) removes blanks at end of lines

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 155622

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Backend, defect)

Description

[Ulf Dunkel]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20031221
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20031221

I use many templates as text snippets for my daily e-mail work. It's rather
annoying that blanks AT THE END of lines are removed automatically. It's no good
style, too, to find two additional returns (line feeds) at the end of each saved
template.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:



Expected Results:  
I would expect Mozilla to keep my mail body stuff untouched when I save it as a
template. I have distinct reasons for using blanks at the end of template lines,
e.g. an opening line for a mail answer like:

"Sehr geehrter Herr "

So I can copy & paste the template in my mail answer, jump to the end of the
first line and insert the name of the mail recipient quickly.

Also, I do not want to have the two additional lines added at the end of a
template for no reason.

Comment 1

[Martin Tibensky]

can confirm


Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20040119

Comment 2

[Christian Eyrich]

Ulf, I don't know you're using format=flowed and if, if this is the cause. But I
guess, the special meaning of a blank at line endings in case of format=flowed
can be the cause for your problem (see
file:///D:/Texte/Mozilla/formatflowedfaq.html).

The additional line breaks at the mail end is clearly bug 70728 for me. If you
agree, please change the summary to only include the space problem.

Comment 3

[Ulf Dunkel]

Summary changed as proposed by Christian.

Christian: How do I find out if I use format=flowed?

If I would use format=flowed, then this is still a bug for me, because I was the
one who entered these blanks and I won't have them "optimized away" by any kind
of formatting. Let me figure out examples (with ~ visualizing REMOVED blanks and
* visualizing fix ADDED line breaks):

Default mode:
-------------
A long line of text should be wrapped after 73 characters as defined in 
"Preferences: Mail & Newsgroups: Composition: Wrap plain text 
characters at 72 characters".

(Comment: I guess this is 'format=flowed' - here the 'line' has 163 characters
and will be wrapped at 72 chars according to the Preferences stuff with no blank
removed or added)


Wrapped mode:
-------------
A long line of text should be wrapped after 73 characters as defined in *
"Preferences: Mail & Newsgroups: Composition: Wrap plain text *
characters at 72 characters".

(Comment: No idea if this is a good name - please regard the line breaks):


Bad current mode:
-----------------
A long line of text should be wrapped after 73 characters as defined in~
"Preferences: Mail & Newsgroups: Composition: Wrap plain text~
characters at 72 characters".

(Comment: This kind of formatting done by Mozilla causes at least the problem
that the long line has not only been wrapped but has been 'broken' into 3 lines
of fixed lengths. Try and copy some stuff of this kind into another program
where you want to reformat the lines, e.g. for making a book. You will have to
add the now MISSING blanks at the end of each line within a paragraph again -
silly work.)

The treatment of blanks (at the beginning and end of lines) by Mozilla in pure
text stuff has become rather lousy, causing AT LEAST more additional work when
editing texts and ugly line crunchings after a couple of quotings.

Comment 4

[Ulf Dunkel]

Please read '... after 72 characters ...' in my example sentence. Sorry.

Comment 5

[Christian Eyrich]

If you didn't disable it in the prefs (no UI), format=flowed is activated. But
you can also look in the header of a mail you wrote. If it's activated, you'll
find it in the Content-Type line.

As I wrote before, it's just my thought that f=f is the reason Mozilla does like
it does.

A blank at the line end would mean to handle the line as one with the next when
loading it in a f=f reader.
So if Mozilla leaves "Sehr geehrter Herr ", the next line would be appended when
displaying.

But at least for Draft and Template we could leave the text as the user wrote
it. Might be a good compromise.

Comment 6

[Ulf Dunkel]

Thanks for your hints. I did not switch format=flowed off and so my sent email
headers show it.

I guess your compromise is the best idea. Keep all user edited plain text stuff
untouched when saving as draft, template and - file. :-)

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

This is a dupe.  The bug I'm duping this to is for the f=f case; see bug 160970 
for the non-f=f case, and in particular bug 160970 comment 7 for my musings on 
why this is not fixable in the non-f=f case.

I'll update the dupe to include "template" in the summary.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 155622 ***