292578 - Mail Reply: Space Newline Newline Turns into One Newline

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Jay Smith]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040914
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040914

Generated messages received with text that contains a space followed by two
newlines has UPON REPLY those two newlines turned into one newline.

The messages are from a shopping cart system that puts newlines into the message
using a "BACKSLASH n"  (I'm not using a backslash here in case it is a problem
in this database, etc.)  The messages are plain text.

The messages are RECEIVED fine.  They look fine.

When you REPLY to the message, again plain text, they look fine in the Reply
Compose window.

However, when you actually SEND the message, the "extra" newlines are missing in
the Sent folder messages and the recipient sees that the newlines are missing.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use shopping cart system (mine) that generates plain text message including
newlines created by outputting "backslash n".  To separate paragraphs TWO
"backslash n" are put out.  *** IF the message content character before the TWO
newlines is a blank space, then I have this problem.

2. Receive the message that was generated (the order from the shopping cart)

3. REPLY to the message.

Actual Results:  
The reply (in the Sent folder and what the recipient gets) to the message has
only ONE newline where there used to be TWO .... WHERE those TWO were preceeded
by a blank space.

Expected Results:  
The two newlines should have been preserved.

a) Sorry, I do not have access to an updated version of Mozilla.

b) This may not be the correct category in which to report this. 

c) I cannot reproduce this by creating a message in Mozilla.  It seems that the
message has to be created by some other means and then received by Mozilla.

d) I will attach a sample file to this bug report.

e) Here is a "picture" of what happens......

REPLY is supposed to look like... (with blank line between)

203969-00 Price: $0.01    Quantity:    1    Subtotal:  $0.01
Danish West Indies; Covers; Stampless : . 1856 stampless cover,
complete with contents, from CHRISTIANSTED (12 December) to
St. Thomas.: 

203970-00 Price: $0.01    Quantity:    1    Subtotal:  $0.01
Danish West Indies; Covers; Stampless : . 1868 stampless cover,
excellent quality.: 

BUT REPLY looks like this:  (no blank line between)

203969-00 Price: $0.01    Quantity:    1    Subtotal:  $0.01
Danish West Indies; Covers; Stampless : . 1856 stampless cover,
complete with contents, from CHRISTIANSTED (12 December) to
St. Thomas.: 
203970-00 Price: $0.01    Quantity:    1    Subtotal:  $0.01
Danish West Indies; Covers; Stampless : . 1868 stampless cover,
excellent quality.: 

HERE IS WHERE THE SPACE IS....

complete with contents, from CHRISTIANSTED (12 December) to
St. Thomas.: 
            ^  <<<------ SPACE HERE (then two newlines).

Comment 1

[Jay Smith]

Attachment: Example of Message that Causes Problem (Space, Newline, Newline)

SEARCH For: colon space backslash n backslash n to find location of problems.
The problem is related to the space between the colon and the two newlines.

Comment 2

[Jay Smith]

Attachment: Similar, but WITHOUT SPACE before the two newlines and thus WORKS fine.

Search for: colon backslash n backslash n to find location. This message WORKS
properly when it is replied to.

Comment 3

[Hermann Schwab]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Created an attachment (id=182376) [edit]
> Example of Message that Causes Problem (Space, Newline, Newline)
> 
> SEARCH For: colon space backslash n backslash n to find location of problems.
> The problem is related to the space between the colon and the two newlines.

http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man5/mbox.5.html

two newlines are the delimiter between messages in a MBOX file.

Comment 4

[Jay Smith]

In reply to.....

> http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man5/mbox.5.html
> two newlines are the delimiter between messages in a MBOX file.

There may be a problem of the meaning of the word "newline" in our conversation. 

Regardless of what you call it, I hit the "Enter" key twice on my keyboard
betweeen paragraphs when I am writing a Plain Text email.  To me that is two
newlines.  But I don't think that is what you mean.

What I do know is that this is a very special case.

This case involves 
   *SPACE* newline newline
compared to
   newline newline

Everything works fine as long as there is NO *SPACE* character prior to those
two newlines.

Also, I have only been able to create this situation with an email message
created externally from a mail program, i.e. by a shopping cart program that
sends an email to me to tell me what somebody has ordered.

Jay

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.