355232 - semicolon-separated address list fails to wrap in envelope

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Daniel Bates]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060918 Firefox/2.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060918 Firefox/2.0

When I receive an e-mail from a particular person who uses unusual diacritics and I assume therefore a different to normal encoding, the coloums automatically resize and pushes the 'date' coloum out of view. Also, if he has sent mail to many other people then some e-mail addresses are out of view (going off the right of the screen). The same happens with the message body, the text goes off the right of the screen and can't be read unless I copy and paste the message to a black document or a 'compose' screen. The occurance of the text going off the right of the screen happens in the preview plane and a single message sceen (when I open the message).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Recieve e-mail from friend
2.Select message (causes resize and preview plane fault)
3.Open message (causes message window fault)

Actual Results:  
coloums and text are pushed out of view off the screen, text becomes unreadable as it goes off the right side of the screen.

Expected Results:  
Coloums should not of resized.
Text going off the screen should go to the next line.

I can ask my friend to e-mail whoever is going to help me out so that they may see the different encoding/text style he's using.
Thuderbird build - version 1.5.0.7 (20060909)

Comment 1

[Daniel Bates]

Attachment: An e-mail from my friend

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Well, that's weird.

This problem is easy to reproduce in TB 1.5: integrate the message into a message folder, then select it; the Subject column header (or, maybe, the first column? I didn't try reordering columns) expands.

The problem is not the diacriticals; it's the overlong To: list combined with the (illegal but Microsoft-"standard") use of semicolons to separate the list of addresses.  (Your friend should learn that long lists of addressees are better handled with BCC: headers, and also give up using "Live Mail".)

However: the symptom does not manifest in 2b1-0927, so whatever it was that fixed it should be in TB 2.0.  If you see this problem again after installing 2.0 (should be out later this year), feel free to reopen the bug.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #2)
> However: the symptom does not manifest in 2b1-0927, so whatever it was that
> fixed it should be in TB 2.0.  If you see this problem again after installing
> 2.0 (should be out later this year), feel free to reopen the bug.

I spoke too soon.  In 2b1, the long list of addresses is still a problem: it won't wrap the way a comma-separated list does, so it shows as one long unbroken line.

The aspect where the columns are resized, etc, is bug 340327.  After bug 335973 was fixed, a long single address or list of addresses is "collapsed" when the message is first viewed, and the collapsed list doesn't cause the symptoms of 340327.

When this message is viewed, the list is collapsed at the beginning, but expanding it just makes the address line very long.  Even if bug 340327 didn't apply, the display of the addresses would be truncated to the width of the window and all the subsequent addresses wouldn't be visible -- that's true for me with this message even when the standalone message window is maximized in a 1600x1200 screen.  Again, I blame Live Mail.  :)

There are other cases where this can happen.  See attachment 247201 [details] from 
bug 340327 -- in that case, one of the addresses in the list is MIME-encoded, which forces all subsequent addresses to all appear on the same line.

Comment 4

[Daniel Bates]

The bug is no longer there!  I don't know what fixed it, possibly the update, or Live mail got heir act together.  The last 4 or 5 e-mail I've had from this livemail address works fine... No auto resizing and only the first three e-mail addresses are shown at first, no problem in expanding the list either.
Any idea if Live mail have changed their code?  I did complain to them =).
Thanks anyway.
P.S. If you need an example letter just ask.

Comment 5

[Eyal Rozenberg]

(In reply to comment #4)
> The bug is no longer there!  I don't know what fixed it, possibly the update,
> or Live mail got heir act together.  The last 4 or 5 e-mail I've had from this
> livemail address works fine... No auto resizing and only the first three e-mail
> addresses are shown at first, no problem in expanding the list either.

The message pushes the date column and other window content off to the left, with 2006-12-01 tb trunk nightly, when the list is expanded. When the list is not expanded, it is improperly truncated.

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Daniel Bates, the symptom described here still occurs with current versions of the program.  Perhaps the mail you've received recently is no longer using semicolons to separate the list, but this bug is not fixed.

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 362288 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 348933 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

Seems to be a WFM though.

Reporter, does the issue still occur in the latest supported 2.0.0.x / Shredder trunk nightlies?

(1.5.0.x is now end-of-life and the latest supported 2.0.0.x is 2.0.0.16)

Comment 10

[Thomas Eriksson]

Yes, this issue is still present in 2.0.0.16.

Comment 11

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

The basic problem of failure-to-wrap seems to have been addressed in the new envelope panel in Shredder; I'm seeing proper wrapping at the semicolons.

However, as in bug 340327, the individual email addresses are not being parsed out individually -- they don't have the little star+dropdown tools seen on single, or comma-separated, addresses; instead, there is one instance of this that applies to the entire list.  Using "compose mail to" on a semicolon-separated address creates a message addressed to a single entry, the entire string.

These symptoms are actually a result of bug 242693.  The sample message attached to this bug displays (Gecko/20081005 Shredder/3.0b1pre) as:

   To:  rc370"@cam.ac.uk; emilyashton89@[...]
             ^----  note the quotemark

which is similar to the results I tabulated at bug 242693 comment 3.  So, since the wrapping is fixed OK in 3.0, I'm resolving this as WFM.