544180 - Saving mail in text format breaks formatting of the saved file by inserting line break between header and its value

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[mad.engineer]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100111 Thunderbird/3.0.1

I've noticed that if I save the an email using "Other options->Save As" option, even though I select Format-> Plain Text, the file gets saved with a .eml extension. No a big deal. But when I open that saved email using Notepad or Wordpad, the formatting is all screwed up. See attached screen shot for actual details.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open an email
2. Go to Other actions->Save As
3. Select Plain text format
4. Save the file
5. Open using Notepad or Wordpad. Formatting is all over the place.
Actual Results:  
Formatting of the saved message is all over the place see attached screen shot.

Expected Results:  
Formatting should not be broken.

This is what it looks like in real. See attached screen shot for exact output:

Subject:
Re: Document
From:
User <[e-mail]>
Date:
Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:38:55 -0800 (PST)
To:
"User2" <[e-mail]>

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010, User 2 wrote:

Comment 1

[mad.engineer]

Attachment: Using Save As function in TB 3.0.1

Comment 2

[mad.engineer]

Attachment: Actual output of the saved message after viewing in Notepad

Comment 3

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

What exactly is wrong with the formatting? It looks like some or all header lines are hard-wrapped after their header-colon pairs, but that's all I can see right now. Could you elaborate a little? Perhaps you could attach another screenshot with circles around the places with broken formatting.

Comment 4

[mad.engineer]

The hard wrapping is the actual problem as seen in the attached screen shot. This makes the Save As function pretty much useless IMHO.

I hate to mention other email clients, but I've tested the same with Outlook 2007 and Pine/Alpine and both do not show this problem. I'm attaching a screen shot from Outlook where I performed the exact same function of opening a message and doing a Save As and saving it as a .txt file. When I open that file via Notepad, no such hard-wrapping at all. This to me proves that Save As feature in TB 3.0.1 is broken.

Comment 5

[mad.engineer]

Attachment: As you can see the same steps performed in Outlook. The saved file as viewed in notepad with no hard-wrapping at all

Comment 6

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

Confirming, setting summary to avoid repetition of my own confusion. Component is uncertain, though.

Comment 7

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

This is not a pretty bug, but if it were the last bug standing, I don't think we would let this keep 3.1 from going out the door, given what I know now.  It is a crummy failure mode, so adding wanted+.

However, that might change if this is a regression from either 3.0 or 2.0.0.x.  Is it?  If so, please renominate, and also add the regressionwindow-wanted keyword.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Arthur, can you reproduce this issue?

Comment 9

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

Attachment: npp-formatting.png

Just to preface my response, I'm on 66.0b3 x64. But, there is not longer an "Other Options > Save As" as is shown in the image from Comment 1. I simply did a File > Save As > File > and chose from the "Save As Type" dropdown to be Text File. I think it's the same effect.

As it relates to the formatting shown in the OP's image, I can confirm the header that's included when doing Save As to a Text File does have wonky formatting. When I do it, it appears as below and matches the P's formatting. I switched my View > Headers from "All" to Normal" to make it easier to work with it.

Appears as:

Subject:
Re: Issues installing software
From:
"User, Some" <[e-mail]>
Date:
3/20/2019, 4:35 PM
To:
"Recipient, Some" <[e-mail]>
CC:
Some CC-User <[e-mail]>, Some CC-User2 <[e-mail]>

Should probably look like:

Subject: Re: Issues installing software
From: "User, Some" <[e-mail]>
Date: 3/20/2019, 4:35 PM
To: "Recipient, Some" <[e-mail]>
CC: Some CC-User <[e-mail]>, Some CC-User2 <[e-mail]>

So it seems there are some excess line breaks munging up the header output. I cannot speak to the history or reason of why headers are being included but if you have View > Headers > All chosen, it's a hot mess.

But as for the message body, the output seems more or less formatted correctly and reflects the original message body including any quoted text sans any kind of greater than (>) notation indicating quoted text. It's simply tabbed for every level of quotation. At least it is in Notepad. In Notepad++ 7.6.4, I can see one level of quotation when there actually should be two. Please see both attachments.

Comment 10

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

Attachment: Re Issues installing software.txt

Comment 11

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

Disregard what I said about Notepad++, the vertical line shown in the PNG indicates a tabbed space. So, all is well.

Comment 12

[Arthur K. (he/him)]

(In reply to Arthur K. from comment #9)

But as for the message body, the output seems more or less formatted correctly and reflects the original message body including any quoted text sans any kind of greater than (>) notation indicating quoted text. It's simply tabbed for every level of quotation. At least it is in Notepad. In Notepad++ 7.6.4, I can see one level of quotation when there actually should be two. Please see both attachments.

Just wanted to follow up on this as I just had the chance to update to 67.0b1. Issue is still present but as for whether quotation (>) appears seems to depend on the email client / method that sent the reply message. Let me know if there's anything else you want me to test.