234878 - Escape code issues in URL launching

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Richard S. Hall]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040207 Firefox/0.7+ StumbleUpon/1.899

The following URL in Thunderbird is not launching Firefox correctly, even though
the same URL launches fine in the Mozilla application suite (it appears to be
due to escape code conversion):

http://koppa.imag.fr:7000/٪7Ehumberto/bibliography/papers.cgi?Beugnard1999

This URL was created in Mozilla using "copy link location". The actual URL is:

http://koppa.imag.fr:7000/~humberto/bibliography/papers.cgi?Beugnard1999

When first version of the URL above is clicked on in Thunderbird, the URL that
ends up being used in Firefox is:

http://koppa.imag.fr:7000/%D9%AA7Ehumberto/bibliography/papers.cgi?Beugnard1999

I am using Firefox 0.8 and Thunderbird 0.5 under Linux, although I have noticed
this problem in previous releases.

To summarize, the initial URL was created using "copy link location" in Mozilla
from the second URL and mailed to me in Thunderbird. Thunderbird lauches
Firefox, which tries to load the third URL and fails. All of this works
correctly under the Mozilla application suite.

-> richard

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Send a message to the Thunderbird mail client containing the first URL.
2. Try to launch Firefox from Thunderbird to view the URL in the mail message.

Actual Results:  
It cannot find the page, because Firefox is trying to load the third URL.

Expected Results:  
The page should load.

Comment 1

[Richard S. Hall]

Let's try this again. The first URL should be:

<pre>
http://koppa.imag.fr:7000/%7Ehumberto/bibliography/papers.cgi?Beugnard1999
</pre>

Comment 2

[Richard S. Hall]

As a follow up to my own post, I noticed that if I email the first URL to myself
in Thunderbird, then it works correctly. If click on the same link in the
message mailed to me by my colleague it doesn't work. The only difference that I
can ascertain, is that I mailed from Thunderbird while he mailed from Evolution.

I can forward the two mail messages to someone if you are interested.

Comment 3

[Richard S. Hall]

Perhaps this is related to the following bug:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153640

But I don't know if it fully explains the behavior that I saw where it works
when mailed from Thunderbird, but not from Evolution.

Comment 4

[Alexey Chernyak]

٪ is not a valid URI escape sequence. This is a purely markup sequence.

Therefore Thunderbird should not treat it in any way special outside of markup
context.
If this sequence appears in an HTML formatted e-mail message source, then this
is a Thunderbird bug.
But if this was encountered in a plain-text message, then this bug is INVALID.

Can you provide the source of the message where this sequence appears?

Comment 5

[Richard S. Hall]

(In reply to comment #4)
> ٪ is not a valid URI escape sequence. This is a purely markup sequence.

Re-read the comments above... &#1642 was a mistake, my second comment above
corrects it. Somehow the original URL got messed up when I submitted the bug
report, but that is NOT the way it looks in my email message...it looks like the
second comment above.

Comment 6

[Alexey Chernyak]

Can you please do File->Save As->File and attach the message file to this bug.

Comment 7

[Richard S. Hall]

Attachment: email message causing the problem

Comment 8

[Richard S. Hall]

Okay, I have attached the saved email message.

A couple of issues, though. The URL is now stale (actually it is just not
accessible to the outside world anymore).

The issue seems to be that "copy URL location" when pasted into Evolution used
the '%7E' code for the '~' character, which when clicked on or "copy link
location" was used in Thunderbird, it would further escape the '%' character,
which would then mess up the URL in Firefox.

If I directly type in the URL into Firefox using '%7E' instead of '~' it works fine.

Comment 9

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 10

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.