234831 - Line-Breaks Fail in Display of Bookmarks File

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[David E. Ross]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113

In the Description portion of a bookmark, it is possible to break a line.  On a
PC, this merely involves using the Enter key while typing the text.  However,
when the bookmarks file is displayed in a Mozilla window, the Description text
runs together, without the line breaks having any effect.  

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Create a bookmark entry.  
2.  Edit bookmarks.  For the new entry, select Properties.  In the Description
area enter text, using the Enter key to break lines into short segments.  Close
the Properties and Bookmark Manager windows.  
3.  Find the bookmarks file in the Profiles directory.  Open the file.  

Actual Results:  
The description appears in a Mozilla window as a running line of text with the
line breaking near the right margin and not where line breaks were entered.  

Expected Results:  
The description of a bookmark should be displayed with the lines broken where
line breaks were manually entered while typing the text.  (This is the way it
worked in Netscape 4.79.)

If you return to the Bookmark Manager, select the test bookmark, and then select
Properties, you will see the description displayed as expected -- with the lines
broken where the line breaks were manually entered.  Thus, this might be a
Layout problem instead of a Bookmarks problem.  The line breaks that I manually
entered in a test bookmark Description are x0a (LF, okay for UNIX) and not x0d0a
(CR-LF, needed on a PC).  

Note:  I use my bookmarks file as my home page because that is the page I go to
most often.  Some of my bookmarks have Descriptions that are actually lists, but
(because of this bug) they don't look like lists.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Note that opening the bookmark file in the browser is not really supported....

Comment 2

[David E. Ross]

Still a problem: 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910

Test case in original Description is still valid.  

Comment 3

[David E. Ross]

Still a problem: 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041217

Test case in original Description is still valid.  

Someone please confirm this bug.  

Comment 4

[David E. Ross]

Still a problem: 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050319

Test case in original Description is still valid.  

Comment 5

[Ray Booysen]

Reassigning as per Bug #32644

Comment 6

[David E. Ross]

Comment #5 should have cited bug 326443, not 32644.  

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

The data is stored in a manner needed to allow bookmarks to work properly, which it clearly does. Marking bug invalid

Comment 8

[David E. Ross]

This worked with Netscape 4.7.  The format of the bookmarks file has not changed substantially since then.  Before closing this bug, please explain how a fix would impair the operation of the Bookmarks Manager and the use of bookmarks.  

By the way, contrary to comment #1, a number of respondants to a poll conducted by Mozillazine indicated they too use their bookmarks file as their browser's home page.  

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Netscape 4.x apparently included <br> at the end of each line of the description, except for the last line. For example

<DD>d1<BR>
d2<BR>
d3 

Comment 10

[Peter Weilbacher]

I don't know a reason why this shouldn't be implemented and I can reproduce the problem still with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5pre) Gecko/2008032601 SeaMonkey/2.0a1pre, so I'm confirming this bug.

(I think this is actually a pretty cool use of the bookmarks file and I didn't know that the descriptions actually show up if it's loaded as a page.)

Comment 11

[David E. Ross]

Yes, text entered in Description appears when the bookmarks file is used as my home page.  However, the text runs together when I try to enter a list (not an HTML list, just text broken by line breaks).  

For example, I am tracking some Congressional bills at <http://thomas.loc.gov/>.  I bookmarked that link (as "THOMAS: Legislative Information on the Internet") and entered the bill numbers and a very brief title in Description.  I entered each bill as a separate line.  The bills appear as a continuous stream of text, broken only at the right edge of the window.  

I had been doing this years ago with Netscape Navigator 4.9, where it worked.  But then there are other bug reports against the Bookmarks Manager about capabilities that worked nicely in Navigator 4.9 that do not work now.  Among them are bug 34059, bug 59173, bug 95748, bug 196509, and bug 245934.

Comment 12

[David E. Ross]

This bug report appears to be OBE (overcome by events) with the move of bookmarks into places.sqlite.  I see no way to fix it without manually coding <br> into Description text (which I will do).

Comment 13

[David E. Ross]

Oops!  Inserting <br> into the Description does not work.  Either internally in places.sqlite or when exporting bookmarks to a bookmarks.html file, < and > are converted into &lt; and &gt;.  That might be reasonable, which means I still see no way to fix this.