Closed Bug 247348 Opened 20 years ago Closed 19 years ago

Spell checker doesn't work

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

x86
Windows XP
defect
Not set
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: leszekp, Assigned: mscott)

References

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 0.7

When Spellcheck runs in Thunderbird, either by clicking on button or automatic
check before message is sent, I get an error message.



Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Spell check, either by clicking on spell check button or automatic spell
check before send
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
Window pops up with following error message:

XML Parsing Error: xml processing instruction not at start of external entity
Location: chrome://editor/content/EdSpellCheck.xul
Line Number 1, Column 1:

<buttonid="Ignore" oncommand="Ignore();"label

Expected Results:  
Should check for spelling errors

Uninstalling and re-installing Thunderbird 0.7 didn't fix the problem, even when
the directory was deleted. I also deleted all contents in the "chrome" directory
under Application Data, and this didn't fix the problem either. Everything else
seems to work fine.
I get the exact same message every time spell check button is pressed, or during
the automatic spell check.  After automatic spell check failure, the message is
sent as if spell check worked.

Buld version 0.7 (20040616)

I did not uninstall / reinstall yet, but I can confirm it's happening.
This is part of a larger bug somewhere.  Most Thurnderbird dialog that is opened
from the menu seems to be affected.
---------------------------
Insert / Named Anchor....

XML Parsin Error: xml processing instruction not at start of external entity
Location: chrome://editor/content/EdNamedAnchorProps.xul
Line Number 1, Column 1:

^
---------------------------
Similar messages appear for...
Edit Menu
  Find and Replace...
Insert
  Image...
  Table...
  Link...
  Named Anchor...
  HTML...
  Characters and Symbols...
  Table of Contents... / Insert
Format
  Text Color...
  List / List Properties...

... and so on.  Just about every dialog that is not a Common Control.

Searching the web shows that this is a problem with SOME FILE missing <?xml ?>
at the beginning of the file.  I find it hard to believe it was released this
way, so it must be a conversion issue from 0.6 to 0.7.  I'll keep looking...
I don't see this at all using 0.7. Nor have I heard others complain.

I'd try re-installing and making sure you do a clean install and not install on
top of an existing binary. See the release notes for details. 
As Russell Ryba's comments show, other people *have* seen it. And I did a clean
re-install *twice*, both times checking to make sure that the old Thunderbird
program directory had been fully deleted before re-installing (it was). This did
not solve the problem. Ultimately, I wound up removing 0.7, and installing 0.6,
which has a working spellchecker.

(In reply to comment #4)
> I don't see this at all using 0.7. Nor have I heard others complain.
> 
> I'd try re-installing and making sure you do a clean install and not install on
> top of an existing binary. See the release notes for details. 
First I tried renaming Program Files\Mozila Thunderbird to Mozilla
Thunderbird-old and reinstalling.  After installing the program never displayed.
 Task Manager showed Thunderbird.exe in memory using about 90% CPU.  It appeared
to be in a loop and never did display.  Starting multiple copies caused other
copies to just pile up and never display, although they didn't appear to use
much memory and hardly any CPU time.  Killing any copy seemed to kill all copies.

I was able to fix this by renaming the Application Data directory, and
reinstalling.  In folder  C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\" I
renamed Thunderbird to Thunderbird-old.  I then reinstalled Thunderbird and it
recreated that directory.

These are the steps I took to make it work on my system, although it does not
identify the bug of fix it...
1. Rename Thunderbird to Thunderbird-old in Application Data folder
2. Reinstall Thunderbird-0.7 via installer exe (XP Home)
3. Re-created my old email account using the wizard

--- The bug did not happen at this point, 
--- so it's something in the Application Data directory

Then to get my old mails back...
4. Closed Thunderbird
5. I merged my old inbox mails with my new inbox mail folders manually...
  Type Thunderbird-old\path\to\inbox >> Thunderbird\path\to\inbox
6. Repeated for Junkmail and other folders
7. Logged in and flagged all Junkmail as junk to retrain the spam filter

-----------------------------------------------------
I have a profile directory that can reproduce this bug, but I have not
investigated any further.  I am willing to do some work if someone wants to
direct me in tracking this bug down.  I am a 6 yr programmer, but I have not
looked at XUL.  

Work around is to rename more then the Chrome folder in the application
directory.  Leszek, perhaps you can try renaming bits of your Application Data
folders in order and further limit the scope of this bug.  

Scott, would you like me to pursue this myself?  I've started looking in
Mail.jar, but I've been hesitant to make any changes until I obtain a better
understanding of the XUL/JS/CSS connections.
Fix it, although I'm not sure of the Exact file since I was getting sloppy by
this time.  The problem appears to be one a bad DLL.  The new install does not
contain any DLL files.  The upgraded install folder contained several dlls. 
Sequentially deleting the files caused the bug to go away.  Unfortunately I lost
track of the current file.  It is after gkparser.dll and somewhere before
n*.dll.  Sorry I can't be more specific.

Scott, perhaps you can tell us are the DLL files in the components directory
still needed after the 0.6->0.7 upgrade?  I deleted them with no ill affects
that I can tell.

Just to be sure, I'm going to rename the folders and reinstall again.
if you did NOT do a clean install as the release notes specify, then you could
see behavior like this. 

YOu should never install an upgrade on top of a prior installation binary.
*** Bug 247628 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I had this problem.  My original install was done by renaming my Thunderbird
directory and installing into a fresh directory.  I believe this would have
quilified as a clean install in that the directory did not exist shen I started.

I have just copied that directory (incase I had problems), deleted everything in
the Thunderbirder directory and copied everything from the sip version of the
install rather than the installer version.  This seems to have fixed my
spellcheck problem.
First time install of thunderbird, dragging over the mail from mozilla (1.6) and
the spellcheck does not work.

Firefox: 0.9
Thunderbird: 0.7
OS: Win 2000
(In reply to comment #8)
> if you did NOT do a clean install as the release notes specify, then you could
> see behavior like this. 
> 
> YOu should never install an upgrade on top of a prior installation binary.

If that is the case, shouldn't the installer inform me that I should not install
over the previous version or detect the previous installation and uninstall it?
 I clicked the link on the front page of mozilla.org and the download started. 
I was never shown any release notes.  Now that you've mentioned this I've read
them and apologize for this useless bug.

In the future it would be helpful to put such information into the installer, or
warn people before linking directly to the download.
I too have had this bug. I'm running Windows 2000 and Thunderbird 0.7 (20040616).

I renamed my existing Thunderbird directory (from "c:\program
files\mozilla\thunderbird" to "c:\program files\mozilla\thunderbird0.6") before
installing the new version (into "c:\program files\mozilla\thunderbird").
I did *not* delete my profile before hand. The release notes clearly imply that
it is only necessary to delete the program folder, not a personal profile, by
statements such as: "The program directory does not contain profile information;
any existing accounts, account settings, options, e-mail, and news messages will
remain intact. This release does not require changes to your profile to function
properly."

I still feel that this is a bug, and either the release notes should be properly
updated, or the installer should make whatever changes are necessary to prevent
this error from occuring.

Does anyone know what needs to be deleted from the profile directory
(specifically) in order to correct this error message?
I just tryed the spell checker for the first time on version 0.7.1 (20040626).
My first installation of TBird.

The spell checker comes up, but it does nothing.  If I click the recheck
button it claims there are no spelling errors, when there are plenty
of them because I made them on purpose to test it.  I don't think
its doing anything.
(In reply to comment #0)
I'm seeing this same problem in an upgrade from 0.4 to 0.73 on Windows XP.  I've
seen this problem at least before, which is why I'm still running 0.4.
*** Bug 248899 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 249892 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Can we close this bug as it appears that it has been solved by Tb 1.0 and no one
has posted anything further?
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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