506868 - Change of font from variable width to fixed width lost on sending

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 414299

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Nick Howitt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Thunderbird/3.0b3

I have TB set to use HTML font Variable Width by default when composing messages. If I block a section of text, say a paragraph, and change the text to Fixed Width and send the message, the whole message goes out with a variable width font.

If I do the same, but instead of using Fixed Width, use Courier New, the mail goes out correctly.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Set Tools > Options > Composition > General > HTML > Font to Variable Width
2.Write email
3.Select one paragraph and change it to Fixed Width using the dropdown box in the composition window
4.Send the message
Actual Results:  
The message gets sent entirely in Variable Width font

Expected Results:  
The selected text should be in a fixed width font and the rest in a variable width font.

If you repeat the steps but instead of the Fixed Width font choose Courier New, it works correctly.

I noticed it in a nightly so it is not a b3 regression.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Nick, thanks for reporting this ux-problem.

Reporter complains that the differences between "variable width" body text and "fixed width" sections, as seen when composing, are lost when sending.

This happens because Format:Auto-Detect currently removes <tt> tags used for "fixed-width" sections (as well as <pre> tags used for same purpose), and then sends the *whole* msg as undifferentiated text/plain format=flowed.

On recipient's side, *whole* msg is either fixed or variable width, depending on recipient's display setting for plaintext. Reporter rightly requests formatting differences between "variable width" vs. "fixed width" to be preserved when sending (wysiwyg), i.e. to send msg as text/html with <tt> and <pre> for fixed width sections preserved.

That's undoubtedly a duplicate of bug 414299.