589519 - (tb-tables-ux-tracker) [Meta] Thunderbird mail composer is painful for working with tables (long list of bugs)

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Simon]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/6.0.472.41 Safari/534.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b5pre) Gecko/20100821 Shredder/3.2a1pre

I realise that some of these should be separated into different bug reports, but they all appear to be related to a single issue:  table handling seems to have had very little attention in Thunderbird or the HTML composer component.

THUNDERBIRD TABLE BUGS
(I use tables lots for sending out invoices via email, but it usually makes me tear my hair out.)

* You cannot delete a table using mouse or keyboard, only through the deep menu option Format > Table > Delete > Table

* If two tables are immediately adjacent, there's no way to insert text or other object between them (cannot seem to get the keyboard cursor between them)

* If a table is at the start of a document you cannot insert content before it.  If a table is at the end of a document, you cannot insert content after it.

* Copy/paste ugliness - copying and pasting cells or tables NEVER works correctly.  There's always some glitch somewhere.

* Cannot cut/copy a row to move it somewhere else within a table.  Pasting a series of cells into a table pastes *inside* the cell instead of into a new row above.  It also completely breaks the table and the code gets mangled and hard (nigh impossible) to repair without selecting "Undo".

* Copying and pasting a series of cells into an empty space in your email mangles the table code.  I think extraneous <TR> tags get inserted.

* Pasting cells from Microsoft Excel does not retain any formatting (fonts, cell background color, bold, alignment, text colour).

* When pasting a table from MS Excel, its almost impossible to remove the fixed width of columns to revert back to a normal fluid HTML table

* Cannot resize columns by dragging

* None of table commands are available in right-click menu

* When trying to delete multiple table rows, repeated clicks on the (x) for each row does not work.  The first click works, then you need to move mouse off and back onto the (x) before the next click will be accepted.  Feels very tedious.

* Cannot delete a column from a table that has been pasted from MS Excel - leaves a strange space to the right of a table.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Compose a new HTML email in Thunderbird
2. Insert a new table of any dimensions
3. Try to insert content before or after the table (fails)
4. Try to duplicate a row by copying and pasting (pastes incorrectly)
5. Try to delete a table using the keyboard or mouse (fails, unless using the menu option 3 levels deep)
6. Try selecting a table and pasting it elsewhere in the document (pastes incorrectly)
7. Try deleting several rows using repeated clicks on the red (x)
8. Try pasting a table from Excel and deleting a single column (deletes incorrectly)
Actual Results:  
None of the above steps 3-8 function appropriately.

Comment 1

[Simon]

Further details on copying+pasting an entire table:

------------------- ORIGINAL TABLE --------------

<table width="100%" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td valign="top">a<br>
      </td>
      <td valign="top">b<br>
      </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td valign="top">c<br>
      </td>
      <td valign="top">d<br>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>


----------- RESULTING TABLE WHEN COPIED AND PASTED -------------

<table width="100%" border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <tr>
        <td valign="top">a<br>
        </td>
        <td valign="top">b<br>
        </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td valign="top">c<br>
        </td>
        <td valign="top">d<br>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

-------------------------------------

Notice the extraneous <TR> tags are added upon paste.

Comment 2

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> I realise that some of these should be separated into different bug reports,
> but they all appear to be related to a single issue:  table handling seems to
> have had very little attention in Thunderbird or the HTML composer component.

It's easier to have one issue per bug. 

Joe can you point out which one have already been reported ?

Comment 3

[Carl Ponder]

Some of these problems seem to have gone away by now:
1) I can select a table using the mouse and delete it by hitting backspace or enter.
2) Copying/pasting works sometimes.
On the other hand, there are still a huge amount of problems, for example
bug 727603

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Most of the problems mentioned in comment 0 are real problems that affect users of tables in Thunderbird composition, so I'd think it's worth keeping track of them in a TB tracker bug. This isn't ideal as a tracker, and not completely defined yet, but it might be a start.

However, note that most of these problems will be bugs in Core: Editor.
Some of them are already filed there.

Tentative search for table bugs in Thunderbird, Mailnews, and Core:Editor

:thun,mail,edit su:" table"," cell",tablecell
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=%3Athun%2Cmail%2Cedit%20su%3A%22%20table%22%2C%22%20cell%22%2Ctablecell&list_id=6770583

Comment 5

[Massimo Fidanza]

Is this a tenatative to fix this bug?