285399 - Reply quotes entire paragraph as a single line

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Mozilla 1.8b
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b) Gecko/20050217

I received a plain text quoted-printable mail in which the body appeared 
to be one paragraph, properly line wrapped.  When I replied to it, 
(I use the plain text email composer by default) the entire paragraph 
was shown as a single line in the plain text composer window.

The only way I could get composer to treat this paragraph properly was to 
ctrl-A (select all)
ctrl-X (Cut)
ctrl-V (paste)

Expected behavior: quoted message appears line wrapped, as it does in 
the mail view window, with each wrapped line quoted.

Actual behavior: Entire paragraph appears as one very long quoted line.

Reproducible:  every time

Will attach email message that reproduces.

Comment 1

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Attachment: email message shows problem

Just add this message to a local folder to see it.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Doesn't Edit|Rewrap fix the problem?

Altho the message appears, in the source, to be multiline, it is treated as a 
single line due to the way the quoted-printable decoding is handled.  Beyond 
that, this is the same problem as bug 196033.

Comment 3

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Doesn't Edit|Rewrap fix the problem?

That plus TOO MUCH editing does.  The editing is required because rewrap 
loses the quotation status (doesn't put > on the new lines), and 
adding those is a pain.

Comment 4

[Dan Kohn]

I'm still seeing this bug with build 2005090406.  It only occurs in the
plaintext editor (which I use by default).  Replying with HTML (shift-reply)
avoids the bug.  I can't attach the two problem messages because they're
private, but one uses:

Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

and the other, Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.6487.1, oddly uses UTF-8
base64 for all-ASCII text/plain, something I'd previously only seen in spam:

Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

Comment 5

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

This bug is living proof that no-one is working on mozilla/seamonkey/TBird's
email composer.  

Today, in replying to a series of emails, I spent a cumulative total of about
30 minutes reformating each message to which I was replying in the composer
window, after it had been misquoted.  For *each* and *every* paragraph of 
quoted text, the steps to reformat it so that it looks reasonable are:

1. Remove all quoted blank lines (to workaround a bug in the rewrapper).
That is, remove the leading ">", making them true blank lines.

2. Highlight the entire quoted paragraph (which appears as a single quoted line)

3. Alt E W (invoke the rewrapper)

4. Observe that the rewrapper broken the line up into multiple lines, but
didn't put ">" at the beginning of any of the new lines.

5. Observe that the rewrapper ate the blank line that followed the paragraph.

5. Add ">" to the beginning of each new line in the paragraph. 
This will make many of the new lines too long.

6. highlight the entire paragraphe.

7. Alt E W again  (invoke the rewrapper, again)

8. Observe that the rewrapper ate the blank line after the paragraph again,
   so reinsert it.

Repeat all those steps for EVERY PARAPGRAPH in the quoted message.

You know what?  Life to too short to waste any more time on this crap.

I am seriously looking for a new email program, one that serves my needs,
and not vice versa.  

Comment 6

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

At the suggestion of some folks on the cc list, I have tried various 
combinations of 

1. Setting mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support to true

2. Setting mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed to false

None of these have any impact on the quotation in the composer.

Comment 7

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

"What happens if you don't remove the '>' from the blank lines?", you ask.
They get wrapped right into the text, just like any other text character.  

Comment 8

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I don't have your problems.  Altho Rewrap does it have its bugs, (bug 191881 
and bug 187997 in particular) it basically works fine for me if the selection begins with a quoted line and ends with a blank line.  (Alternately, after selecting the lines I want to rewrap by dragging the mouse, I type Shift+LeftArrow; this has no visible effect but moves the selection-end inside 
the line-end, preventing the discard of the final line break.)

If every paragraph needs rewrapping, I don't need to select anything; Rewrap just works.  If there is a particular part of the text that shouldn't be wrapped, then I have to select above and below it, and add a blank line at the end of each selection, but I do not need to fiddle with every paragraph.

Don't set priority on a bug unless you're the one who's fixing it.


(In reply to comment #6)
> At the suggestion of some folks on the cc list, 

"Some of the folks on the cc list"?  Can you say "passive aggressive"?  Name your sources or shut up.

I did not recommend those settings; they clearly have nothing to do with your problem.  While it's true that the bugs with f=f and the bugs with rewrap 
often appear similar, they work on different sections of the program; f=f is 
unrelated to editing messages.


(In reply to comment #5)
> This bug is living proof that no-one is working on mozilla/seamonkey/TBird's
> email composer.  

That remark is solid evidence that some people think that Open Source means "the developers must do my bidding."

> I am seriously looking for a new email program, one that serves my needs,
> and not vice versa.  

Then why are you even bothering to post here?  Your impotent rage is pathetic.

Comment 9

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

I shouldn't ever need rewrap.  The fix for this bug is not to fix rewrap, but rather to fix quotation of plain text emails when I press reply.  I shouldn't need to do anything more than click on "reply".  

It may interest you to know that I am a mozilla developer, full time, almost 10 years now. (Are you?)  I actually fix bugs when found in the code I work on,
which is more than I can say for any mailnews code developers.

But let's face it, mozilla core mail/news composition (at least for plaintext) is an orphan.  FireFox is the only part of mozilla worth keeping.  

If these statements provoke you to work on the product and fix its aged bugs, 
good!  If you don't work on mailnews code, then why are you being defensive?