365345 - Em-spaces ( ) are not copied

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: XPCOM, defect)

Description

[Andy Mabbett]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1

When copying text which includes em-spaces (e.g. "Blithfield Reservoir. Mr. T. W. Ford") the space is not copied to the clipboard as a space.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Copy text including em-space
2.Paste to non-rich text application (e.g. notepad)
Actual Results:  
Pasted text has no space after the word "reservoir": "Blithfield Reservoir.Mr. T. W. Ford"

Expected Results:  
A space after the word "reservoir": "Blithfield Reservoir. Mr. T. W. Ford"

Using Win XP SP2, fully patched.
See also Bug 346969 "      do not wrap"

Comment 1

[Andy Mabbett]

Not tested for other space characters (    etc.)

Comment 2

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

I suspect the problem is with Notepad and/or Windows XP rather than Firefox.
We put the Unicode character \u2003 on the clipboard, it's up to the receiver
to interpret it correctly. You can try this by pasting it to the URL bar
for example (a longer than usual space should be rendered).
Pasting it into a terminal window on Linux and then copying it from there,
pasting it back to the URL bar preserves the \u2003 character.
Copying from Firefox 2.0 to Notepad and then back on Windows Vista also works.

Comment 3

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

I can reproduce this when pasting into a non-Unicode app. on Windows.

Comment 4

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

This would be because the transliterator transliterates the various space characters to ASCII spaces, but leading and trailing spaces are trimmed from property values. I am gobsmacked that nobody noticed this or thought to test it in over 5 years.

Comment 5

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Attachment: Trim spaces in properties before unescaping

Comment 6

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Checked in.

Comment 7

[Atsushi Sakai]

Is this fix the cause of Bug 378839 ?

Comment 8

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Backed out for the time being until after the 1.9a4 freeze.

Comment 9

[Simon Montagu :smontagu]

Checked in again, including the fix for bug 378839.