Closed Bug 358361 Opened 18 years ago Closed 14 years ago

TB places caret (cursor) at line start/end when changing lines using arrow keys.

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

x86
Linux
defect
Not set
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: joel.hedlund, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: qawanted, Whiteboard: [TB 2.x only?])

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060921 Ubuntu/dapper-security Firefox/1.5.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060921 Ubuntu/dapper-security Thunderbird/1.5.0.7 (20060922)

Hi!

This may really be a bug in some dependency, possibly gtk, but I haven't been able to root it out.

While writing emails in TB, if i place the cursor in the middle of any line and then press either the up or down key, the cursor is not moved vertically directly to the next line, but to the beginning of it or to the end of it. If I then press the opposing key, the cursor is not moved back to the original position, but to the beginning or the end of the original line. This is immensely frustrating and makes editing longer emails a real hassle. 

People that are logged in to my computer remotely and running TB over an SSH tunnel experience the same problem. If I ssh to some other machine and use their TB together with my profile (home dir mounted over NFS), the problem is gone.

This problem just appeared one day a couple weeks ago, and hasn't gone away since. It may have appeared after applying patches as usual using the update manager in the distro. I really don't know what these patches were though, so I don't expect that's much help for anyone...

It may have been some shared dependency with gedit (such as gtk?), since gedit has taken to crash X every time that I open a large file. This gedit problem has been around for about as long as my TB problem.

Things I tried that didn't help:
* Changing to HTML or plain text format.
* Setting line wrap length for plain text to 0, 76 or 10000 characters.
* Restarting X between doing the above.
* Deleting my profile (~/.mozilla-thunderbird/xxxxxx.default)
* Completely removing TB using Synaptic and then reinstalling it.
* Manual remove of all files that Synaptic uninstall missed before reinstalling.
* Downgrading to v1.5.0.2 (Distro default w/o security patches) 
* Searching google and mozilla support forum for similar cases.
* Posting at news.mozilla.org.

I'm using Ubuntulinux 6.06 and the latest thunderbird (1.5.0.7). No plugins or extensions other than the english language pack. 


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Write 3 long lines of text in an email.
2. Place cursor in middle of the second line.
3. Press the up arrow key.
4. Press the down arrow key.

Actual Results:  
In step 3, cursor goes to left margin of the line above it. In step 4, the cursor goes to the left margin of the original line. It does not matter if you start with the up or down arrow key. The cursor goes to the margin anyway.

Expected Results:  
In step 3, the cursor should go straight up. In step 4 the cursor should go straight down and end up at the exact original position on the original line.

No plugins extensions used.

I class this as a major bug, since writing longer emails becomes a major pain when you're not able to navigate through the document properly using the keyboard. Using the mouse instead is ergonomically unfavourable.
Reproduced with TB 1.5.0.7, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

Oddly, in the test text that I originally wrote -- a long paragraph that wrapped over five lines -- if I put the caret in the middle of the 1st line and press Down, or in the middle of the 3rd line and press up, the caret ends up at the *end* of the 2nd line, always.  But if the 1st, 3rd, 4th, or 5th line is the target, the caret ends up at the beginning of the line.

Pasting a copy of that paragraph, the same results.  This seems very odd.  Similar results from pasting in a longish text from another source.

On the other hand, creating several a long-ish single-line paragraph adjoining one another, and the cursor always goes to the beginning of any of those lines.  Joining those three lines into a single paragraph, same thing.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Summary: TB places cursor at line start/end after changing lines using arrow keys. → TB places caret (cursor) at line start/end when changing lines using arrow keys.
Blocks: 366796
I can confirm this annoying bug. And that it appeared recently. Unfortunately I can't pinpoint which version it was.
Flags: wanted-thunderbird3?
Assignee: mscott → nobody
I downloaded 3.0b1pre Shredder to check this - it seems to be fixed in this build.  I can confirm that the problem still occurs as recently as 2.0.0.14 on my system.
(In reply to comment #6)
> I downloaded 3.0b1pre Shredder to check this - it seems to be fixed in this
> build.  I can confirm that the problem still occurs as recently as 2.0.0.14 on
> my system.

Based on this comment, not wanted TB 3 unless someone confirms it in a TB 3 beta or nightly.
Flags: wanted-thunderbird3? → wanted-thunderbird3-
Keywords: qawanted
Whiteboard: [TB 2.x only?]
Version: unspecified → 2.0
It may be fixed.  Let's give it a little time, just to be sure.

Thanks.
WFM per comment 5 and 6.
Please reopen if you see otherewise using version 3

what about bug 366796?
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 14 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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