246304 - single quotation marks in bookmark titles are replaced by "'" (and earlier by "‘")

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 245758

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Dave]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040610 Firefox/0.8.0+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040610 Firefox/0.8.0+

First I noticed recently that Firefox turned all the single quote characters in
my bookmark titles into ampersand followed by lsquo; (let me try to reproduce
what I saw here, but I'm not sure I'll do the entities right: ‘).  
Now it's doing something else, equally annonying.

While running this build, I tried fixing the situation by right clicking on the
affected bookmarks and removing the garbage and putting back the single quote
characters.  But when I next restarted the browser, all the single quotes I had
just put back were now replaced with ampersand followed by pound39; (or trying
again to show you what I saw:  ').

Viewing the source of the bookmarks file reveals that there is indeed the entity
for an ampersand (&) followed by part of what I take to be an entity for
a (left?) single quote, (#39; or in the builds of the past few days, lsquo;). 
So firstly, why does the single quotation mark need to be turned into an entity?
 Okay, maybe it has to be, but secondly, why would the entity marker then be
replaced by the entity for the literal entity marker?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Create a new profile in Firefox.
2.  Run Firefox with that profile
3.  Create a bookmark with a single quotation mark in the title
4.  Close Firefox; open with same new profile
5.  Observe that single quotation mark has been replaced by '
6.  Change garbage characters in bookmark back to single quotation mark
7.  Restart Firefox; open with same new profile
8.  Didn't I just get rid of that same #39;?
Actual Results:  
The single quotation mark in the bookmark title is replaced by '.

Expected Results:  
If the single quotation mark must be turned into an entity, Firefox should not
change that entity marker to the literal for the entity marker's character.

No workaround, except not to restart the browser...

Comment 1

[Dave]

Okay, so Bugzilla, it turns out, processes my text and turns things into
entities itself, so here's a clarification of what I saw:

Jim‘s Baked Goods Website

or

Jim's Baked Goods Website

Hard to believe no one filed this yet, but I couldn't find it even in unco's....

Comment 2

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

that's because its not just a Firefox bug.  There's been at least five reports
against Firefox though.

Its never a bad idea to search in bugs marked as duplicate, since it often makes
it easier to find the original.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 245758 ***

Comment 3

[Dave]

(In reply to comment #2)
> that's because its not just a Firefox bug.  There's been at least five reports
> against Firefox though.
As far as this goes, I did search against the bookmarks component without
choosing a product; however, I didn't search for the #39 stuff, because when I
first began the report, I was observing the old lsquo; thing, and I forgot to go
back and search for the #39 thing where I would have found what I was looking
for.  And maybe someone can explain, or point me to somewhere where someone has
already explained, where I can find criteria for whether to report bugs against
"Browser" or against "Firefox".

> Its never a bad idea to search in bugs marked as duplicate, since it often makes
> it easier to find the original.
This would not be necessary if people were a little more careful in naming their
bugs.  But you're absolutely correct.  In any event, it doesn't apply to this
situation, because it's a case of my bug report morphing half-way through, and
me forgetting to search for things involved in the new report.  I am usually
very persistent in looking for earlier reports for obvious bugs, but sometimes
it's just too much of a pain (and if I decide that I usually just don't report
the bug at all).  Sorry for the blunder.

Comment 4

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs, filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change