76732 - [mozTXTToHTMLConv] convert "^H" notation in messages

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Backend, enhancement)

Description

[Garth Wallace]

In USENET (and less commonly in email), the character sequence "^H" (not the
actual control-H character, just a caret followed by an H) is used to show a
"deletion". The meaning is not necessarily immediately obvious to new users, who
may not know that control-H is backspace or that ^character sequences stand in
for control characters.

I think that Mozilla's text-to-HTML conversion should mark up these sequences in
a way that makes them more understandable to newbies.

Given a word containing ^H, the converter should count back from the first ^H by
the number of ^Hs in sequence or until the beginning of the word is reached, and
apply a <DEL> tag. The </DEL> tag should follow the ^H sequence, and the part of
the word following the ^Hs should be contained in <INS></INS>. The ^Hs
themselves should be contained by <SPAN CLASS="txt-tag"></SPAN>. So, the results
would end up like this:

good riddance^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hbye -> good <DEL>riddance<SPAN
CLASS="txt-tag">^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H</SPAN></DEL><INS>bye</INS>
hello^H -> hell<DEL>o<SPAN CLASS="txt-tag">^H</SPAN></DEL>
stupid^H^H^H^H^H^H boss -> <DEL>stupid<SPAN CLASS="txt-tag>^H^H^H^H^H^H</SPAN> boss
etc.

recommended default style:
DEL {text-decoration: line-through}
INS {color: blue}

if somebody wanted to make the ^Hs disappear, they could add:
DEL SPAN.txt-tag {display: none}

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

over to front end.  back end is a totally different beast...

Comment 2

[Garth Wallace]

Ah, thanks. I thought back end sounded wrong, but I was going by the example of
bug #23953, which is another text-to-HTML conversion feature and is currently in
back end.

This may also be dependant on bug #20212, but I'm not sure.

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Actually, it is "backend" - very, very backend: netlib.

Comment 4

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

This was suggested in bug #16507 but never implemented. I'm not marking any 
dependencies or duplicates case bug #16507 was marked 'fixed'.

Comment 5

[benc]

mass assignment of text->HTML bugs to MailNews w/ esther as QA.

Comment 6

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 7

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"