242942 - Format / Text Style / Nonbreaking not working

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: Composer, defect)

Description

[Charlie Sears]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421

In composer or email, select some text and choose Format, Text Style,
Nonbreaking.  The menu item doesn't get checked, and the text style doesn't
change.  This happens in Mozilla 0.7rc1 and in the current nightly build of
Thunderbird.  

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.In composer or email, enter some text.
2.Select the text.
3.Choose Format, Text Style, Nonbreaking.

Actual Results:  
The menu item doesn't get checked, and the text style doesn't change.

Expected Results:  
The text should have been nonbreaking.

The <nobr> tag was used for this in the past.  It's not being inserted.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

I see you commented in bug 154317 yesterday. What do you mean is the difference
between that bug and this one?

Comment 2

[Charlie Sears]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I see you commented in bug 154317 yesterday. What do you mean is the difference
> between that bug and this one?

In that one, it was possible to create nonbreaking text.  In this one, it's not
possible to create nonbreaking text.  So something is certainly different,
though perhaps one fix will solve both problems.  

These problems started happening at different times, too, since the old bug was
first reported for a build that's nearly two years old, and the current problem
just started happening recently.  

I tested this in Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (20040207) and found that bug 154317
happens in it, and bug 242942 does not.  So 242942 is something new.  

Here's what I got in my test in Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (20040207):

This is a line of normal text.<br>
<nobr>This is a line of nonbreaking text.</nobr><br>

<nobr>This is a line of text with </nobr><b><nobr>bold words</nobr></b><nobr>
that was later set nonbreaking.</nobr><br>
<nobr>This is a line of nonbreaking text in which I tried to set words
to bold.&nbsp; It didn't work.</nobr><br>
This is a line of normal text.<br>

Then I tested this in composer in Mozilla 1.7b.  It acts just like Thunderbird
0.6 as far as I can tell:

This is a line of normal text.<br>
This is a line that was supposed to be nonbreaking text.<br>
This is a line of text with <span style="font-weight: bold;">bold words</span>
that was later set nonbreaking.&nbsp; It didn't work.<br>
This is a line of text that was supposed to be nonbreaking, in which I
set <span style="font-weight: bold;">words to bold</span>.&nbsp; The
bold works but the nonbreaking doesn't.<br>
This is a line of normal text.<br>

Hope this helps.

Comment 3

[Gérard Talbot]

You can make a node have non-breaking text though.
1- Select the node (say, a <p>): the text will be highlighted
2- Right-click on the yellow P icon (in HTML tags editing mode) and choose
Advanced Properties...: The advanced property editor must be for the <p> node
3- Choose Inline Style tab. 
4- Property: white-space   Value: nowrap   and click OK button.

I confirm that Text Style / Nonbreaking menuitem does not work. Mozilla 1.8a4
build 2004092505 under XP Pro SP2 here.

CONFIRMING

Comment 4

[Charlie Sears]

The workaround using Advanced Properties / Inline / white-space / nowrap works
for me (though I have trouble remembering to type the "-" in the middle of the
word "white-space").  Many thanks for the workaround.  After some experimenting
I ended up with this result in my HTML:

<span style="font-family: monospace; white-space: nowrap;">text</span>

It's interesting to note that with the cursor in this text the menuitem for
Fixed Width is checked, but not the menuitem for Nonbreaking.  

However I can't do that in Thunderbird when composing email because there's no
HTML tags editing mode.  Any workaround for Thunderbird?  Or any idea when this
might be fixed?  

For now I'm using an old version, Thunderbird 0.5, that doesn't have this
problem, but a workaround or fix would be nice.  

Comment 5

[Gérard Talbot]

> <span style="font-family: monospace; white-space: nowrap;">text</span>
> 
> It's interesting to note that with the cursor in this text the menuitem for
> Fixed Width is checked,  

That's because you chose a non-proportional font (monospace); this has nothing
to do with nonbreaking. You can have a proportional font and have 
white-space: nowrap (nonbreaking text) for its node.

>  but not the menuitem for Nonbreaking.

That's part of this bug. When white-space: nowrap is styling a designated node,
if the blinking caret is inside of that node, then Format/Text Style/Nonbreaking
should be checked &#10004;

Comment 6

[Robert Kaiser]

MASS-CHANGE:
This bug report is registered in the SeaMonkey product, but has been without a comment since the inception of the SeaMonkey project. This means that it was logged against the old Mozilla suite and we cannot determine that it's still valid for the current SeaMonkey suite. Because of this, we are setting it to an UNCONFIRMED state.

If you can confirm that this report still applies to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it back to the NEW state along with a comment on how you reproduced it on what Build ID, or if it's an enhancement request, why it's still worth implementing and in what way.
If you can confirm that the report doesn't apply to current SeaMonkey 2.x nightly builds, please set it to the appropriate RESOLVED state (WORKSFORME, INVALID, WONTFIX, or similar).
If no action happens within the next few months, we move this bug report to an EXPIRED state.

Query tag for this change: mass-UNCONFIRM-20090614

Comment 7

[Charlie Sears]

Yes, this problem still happens in today's nightly build.  

The build is identified as Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1pre) Gecko/20090617 SeaMonkey/2.0b1pre.  If I'm not testing the right thing, please let me know.

It also happens in SeaMonkey 1.1.16, the current stable.

The original steps to reproduce the bug work:

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.In composer or email, enter some text.
2.Select the text.
3.Choose Format, Text Style, Nonbreaking.

Actual Results:  
The menu item doesn't get checked, and the text style doesn't change.

Expected Results:  
The text should have been nonbreaking.

Comment 8

[Charlie Sears]

I would consider this a bug, not an enhancement request, since there is a menu item (Format, Text Style, Nonbreaking) in Seamonkey composer that has done nothing for the past few years.  The menu item worked up until 2002 or so, back in the Thunderbird/Mozilla days.  It's possible to have nonbreaking text in Seamonkey, as described by Gérard Talbot on 2004-09-25 11:44:03 PDT.  But you can't do it with the menu item, and you can't do it at all in Thunderbird except by pasting the text in from another application.

On my screen the possible status values do not include NEW, so I am unable to change the status of this bug to new, as requested by Robert Kaiser on 2009-06-14 17:53:54 PDT.  If it needs to be submitted as as a new bug somehow, please let me know.

Comment 9

[Phoenix]

Still here
Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:10.0a1) Gecko/20111017 Firefox/10.0a1 SeaMonkey/2.7a1

Comment 10

[Charlie Sears]

Yes, this bug still happens in Thunderbird 3.1 as well, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.22) Gecko/20110902 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.14.  Fortunately the workaround still works too, after 7 years(!).  I use Thunderbird or SeaMonkey in order to be able to email code or text in columns, so I use the workaround often, and periodically check to make sure the bug still exists.