289959 - Destroyed chars under OSX in composer window

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Denny Schierz]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; de-DE; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050321 Firefox/1.0.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; de-DE; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050321 Firefox/1.0.2

Often i want to reply mails, but after typing a few words, the chars gets
broken. Look at the image

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. reply mail 
2. write words

Actual Results:  
garbage


Firefox has somtetimes the same problem. Look at the image:

http://www.denny-schierz.de/tmp/bad-font.jpeg

Comment 1

[Denny Schierz]

I've forgotten, i have TB 1.0.2 OSX version

Comment 2

[Jesse Trucks]

This is still a serious issue in Tbird 1.0.6 and Tbird version 1.6a1 (20050911) on OSX 10.4.2.

This bug causes the program to be unusable for sending mail, which is a major loss of functionality.   

Comment 3

[rudy gelderblom]

I have a dozen Mac users on the network, most of whom suffer with this problem. Some users are refusing to use Thunderbird because of it. Using a fixed width for text helps a bit, but you are still hamstrung. Problem also occurs in forms on Firefox

Comment 4

[rudy gelderblom]

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

Comment 5

[d]

I'm having the same trouble with all versions of Thunderbird, including version 1.5 (20051025), on OSX 10.4.2

Characters are broken in every compose window, including new compose windows and the problem is not only restricted to reply windows. The characters are most often broken by backspacing to remove text in a line and then retyping. What I see is pretty much the same as the image uploaded here: deleted characters remain on the screen, but with improper spacing causing quite a bit of messy overlapping. Cursor placement is also wrong after using backspace to remove text, and the actual typing position is often two spaces behind the actual cursor position. 

As others have mentioned, it seriously affects one's ability to use the program. My current workarounds are either to save the working message as a draft and reopen it (which removes the previously broken characters but does not prevent new ones), or to boot Gentoo Linux and use Thunderbird there (which prevents the problem from ocurring at all).

Comment 6

[Michael Wild]

I too have the same problem using Mac OS X 10.4.8 and Thunderbird 2.0 beta 1.

However, I have a somewhat strange work-around. As soon as the cursor position does not match the visual cursor any more (be it lagging behind or running ahead) and things start to get as messy as in the screenshot, hitting a special character on an international keyboard (in my case I like the ö on my swiss german 'replacement' keyboard), things straighten out immediately. No more problems on that line (but only on that particular line!). Removing the character returns the line to the previous, destroyed state again.

Comment 7

[Michael Wild]

Changing the font size to 12px also seems to fix the problem for me. Although things are a bit small now, I at least can use Thunderbird reliably now.

The settings which did the trick for me:
Thunderbird->Preferences->Display->Formatting->Fonts:
- Fonts for: Western
- Proportional: Sans Serif 12px
- other fonts: Andale Mono 12px
- Minimum font size: 12px

I am using TB version 2 beta 2 (20070116) on a Intel Core 2 Duo MacBookPro with Mac OS X 10.4.8.

PS: It would be nice to hear something from the developers on this issue.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Does this still occur when using current version 38?

Comment 9

[Phoenix]

Resolved per whiteboard