442755 - Users Unable to URI into BLOCKQUOTE Cite Attribute after 'Paste as Quotation' in Interface

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Charles A. Templeton III]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14
Build Identifier: version 2.0.0.14 (20080421)

HTML 4.01 allows for cite attribute. This attribuite links the URI of the quoted material to the actual quote in the e-mail. (See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/text.html#edef-BLOCKQUOTE) The current user interface of Thunderbird does not provide the ability for the user to specify the URI of the quoted material (in the cite attribute) after a 'Paste as Quotation'.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Copy text.
2. Go to e-mail and right click in e-mail body.
3. Select 'Paste as Quotation'.
Actual Results:  
After the above steps are completed the text is quoted in the BLOCKQUOTE HTML tags but the Thunderbird interface does not provide the user the ability to add the URI cited material.

Expected Results:  
As a user I would expect after completing the 'Past as Quotation" a menu would pop up asking if you wanted to associate a URI with the quote. Also, I would expect that I would be able to right click on quoted material and select a menu item called "Blockquote Properties" to edit the URI location. I would also expect an 'Advanced Edit' menu like in the table proprieties dialog.

Comment 1

[Jean-Marc M.]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Actual Results:  
> After the above steps are completed the text is quoted in the BLOCKQUOTE HTML
> tags but the Thunderbird interface does not provide the user the ability to add
> the URI cited material.

Also as mentionned in the "Insert a quote / quote a text in a message" [1] topic a "type" attribute is set to "cite". The problem is that the "blockquote" element doesn't have such an attribute so the messages are not HTML 4.01 valid. Is it internally used to display pasted quotes differently from indented texts ? It seems so considering the image displayed in the topic.

Notes :
* [1] http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=950775

Comment 2

[rsx11m]

(In reply to comment #1)
> a "type" attribute is set to "cite". The problem is that the "blockquote"
> element doesn't have such an attribute so the messages are not HTML 4.01 valid.

This observation appears to be correct. The <blockquote type="cite"> tag wouldn't be in compliance with the attribute list in Section 9.2.2 of the standard referred to above (and yes, Thunderbird uses it to identify a quote, usually for an e-mail replied to, which is supposed to be decorated with a quote bar rather than just indented). There are "type" attributes in other tags, generally indicating a MIME content type of what is referred to. I would assume that non-Mozilla clients just ignore the type attribute in quoted text and show it with regular <blockquote> indentation.

> the Thunderbird interface does not provide the user the ability to add
> the URI cited material.

Yes and no. There is no direct user interface available for that purpose. You can use the "Indent" button or Edit > Paste As Quotation to get your text into a <blockquote> environment, then highlight it and use Insert > HTML to add the desired URI as "cite" attribute. However, this is obviously not very convenient to do if quotes have to be included frequently and their references needed.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

can you reproduce this using version 3.0 [1] or 3.1 [2]?
if you no longer see the problem, please set resolution to WORKSFORME when closing the bug.

[1] http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/
[2] http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/  (beta 2
comes out soon)

Comment 4

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

RESOLVED INCOMPLETE due to lack of response to previous comment. If you feel this change was made in error, please respond to this bug with your reasons why.