248349 - Editor discards empty anchor tags specified with ID instead of NAME

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: DOM: Editor, defect)

Description

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

In Composer and the HTML Mail editor, it is not possible to include an anchor 
that has an ID instead of a NAME.  This is true for pasting text with such an 
anchor from the browser, or when using Insert|HTML or editing the HTML view in 
Composer.

Steps to reproduce:
In Composer: 
1) open a new window, or open an existing file.  Go to HTML Source tab.  Put 
cursor at some reasonable point in the <body> -- e.g. within text.
2) type:    <a id="foo"></a>
3) go to HTML Tags tab
4) return to HTML Source tab

Actual results:
After step 3, there is no visible placeholder (either [A] or the anchor) where 
the tag was entered.
After step 4, the tag that was entered is no longer present

Expected results: placeholder should be visible on HTML Tags view, preferably as 
the anchor; tag text should continue to be present.

A non-empty tag:   <a id="bar">BAR</a>   is maintained in the source; the 
placeholder is [A] rather than the anchor symbol, altho a link to #bar will work 
as expected.
An empty tag with name:   <a name="ok"></a>   is maintained, and its placeholder 
is the anchor.

Same results are seen using Insert|HTML, in both Composer and in HTML mail.  
(To view the HTML source in mail, select the entire text and then Insert|HTML.)

Opening a file in composer that contains an empty, ID-spec'd anchor works as 
expected, except that [A] is displayed on the Tags view rather than the anchor 
symbol. Also note: after such a file has been opened, if Insert|Link is 
selected, the dropdown list of possible links includes both the id-specified and 
the name-specified anchors.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Attachment: Test data file

Alternate path to reproduce:
Open this attachment in Mozilla browser
Select all text, and copy to clipboard
Open new composer window
Paste copied text in
Go to HTML Source tab

Actual results: the empty <a id="foo"></a> tag (eight line of text) is not
present
Expected results: it oughtta be!

Comment 2

[Daniel Glazman (:glazou) (not active in Mozilla any more)]

confirmed, taking.

Comment 3

[Daniel Glazman (:glazou) (not active in Mozilla any more)]

This is because nsHTMLEditRules consider an empty a element that has no name
attribute as removable (sigh).

Comment 4

[Daniel Glazman (:glazou) (not active in Mozilla any more)]

Attachment: proposed fix

This fix is not optimal since we should really revamp all this part of the editor: if removing useless elements makes sense for the editor in Thunderbird, it does not make sense in a lot of cases in the Markup editor. But since this
bug severely affects editability of HTML5 anchors (using IDs and not names any
more), I suggest we don't wait so here's a trivial fix for the bug.

Comment 5

[(no longer active)]

Comment on attachment 463136 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

Could you also add a test for this, please?  Thanks!

Comment 6

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.

Comment 7

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)(PTO: 9/19-9/27)]

I don't reproduce this bug with copying the testcase and pasting it into contenteditable.