Well, this forum is using HTML so it will also treat your whitespace with disdain. Quite a tricky thing to demonstrate.

I'll check in Thunderbird later.

Understand. It looked OK as I typed it but, yes, the extra whitespace was stripped when entered.

Thank you for investigating.

What do you copy from? Edit Test copied from notepad. Here ends(ten spaces) the(ten nbsp)          Internet

Check your settings for keyboard Sticky keys and Bouncing keys as well as autocorrect

Do not have sticky keys on, nor bouncing keys, not auto-correct

Trivally easy to reproduce:

1. Open TB 2. Set e-mail composition to non-HTML 3. Open a new e-mail 4. In the body of the e-mail type:

   a<space><space>a<space><space><space>a

5. Copy and paste it back into the e-mail and you will see that the duplicate <space> characters are removed

I suspect that the problem is copying from within TB rather than pasting from within TB since if you repeat the above but type into anything else, Word, NotePad, WordPad etc and paste - then the extra spaces appear when pasting into the e-mail body.

M_G_W

Did that and sent it to myself. Nothing, spaces are there

I think you're e-mail is HTML - I said to disable composition of e-mail in HTML

Tools -> Account Settings -> Composition & Addressing

If 'Compose messages in HTML format' is set - then yes, it works, if you copy text with multiple consecutive spaces from within a TB e-mail and paste it then the multiple consecutive spaces are preserved

If 'Compose messages in HTML format' is not set - then it does not work, if you copy text with multiple consecutive spaces from within a TB e-mail and paste it then the multiple consecutive spaces are replaced by a single space

Alright, If i set account composition to non -html I get that result. If I only set mail delivering format to plain text I don't get it. And it doesn't send any html.

OK. I am not even considering what happens when the e-mail is sent, since the text of the e-mail is already wrong, copying and pasting text with multiple consecutive spaces replaces these multiple consecutive spaces with one space.

Therefore, yes, when you send this e-mail the consecutive spaces have been removed and yes the e-mail is obviously not in HTML.

So are you confirming my belief that this is a bug in TB? That is:

"If e-mail composition is set to non-HTML then when text is copied in TB that has multiple consecutive space characters then TB replaces each sequence of multiple consecutive space characters by a single space"

???

If so, what's the next step?

This is a serious bug for us. We always use non-HTML e-mails to help to guarentee delivery. We have standard mails that use formatted text with such multiple spaces inside them.

So if you're confirming the bug I need to know how to get it fixed?

With best regards

M_G_W

@Zenos Can you confirm this? And is it a bug or the preferred way to act?

I'm also confused that he got the same thing in here as it is html.

This q has been closed but there was no solution.

errr... this is not closed - or at least we would not close support calls for our software product this situation...!

It can be closed when either there is a solution for me or a workaround or it is a confirmed bug and an ETA for a fix!

At least that is how we handle software support - maybe you do it differently.

With best regards

M_G_W

We are all ordinary users volunteering in this support-channel. We try to answer as best as we can. And if we can't we may ask around or not.

Naturally you make it differently if you are employed to handle support for a paid product.

Closing it you did yourself by picking an answer as chosen solution.

My mistake - apparently I clicked on the green button in the automated e-mail and did not see that it says 'mark it as solved' and not the (very tiny) bit of plain text that is 'not solved, continue to discuss'. Probably instead of just one button in the e-mail, there should be two large buttons in the e-mail 'close call' and 'continue' for people like me who click a button without reading it. My mistake.

Thank you for your time. I now know it is a bug and not an option I have failed to set or some other error on my part.

For me that's the fifth bug with TB 38.2 since I upgraded from (I think) TB16. I will go back to that previous version, at least it worked!

M_G_W

M_G_W,

I am completely 200% with you. This is a major issue for me, too, although I don't remember, which of the many TB updates introduced this weird and nonsensical behaviour.

f.

I just tried the latest 38.5.0 update to TB - the problem is still there.

What is so frustrating is not knowing how to report it to someone so that it can be fixed!

M_G_W

M_G_W, thanks to your descriptive discussion title - previously I seem to have searched for the wrong keywords - I found, that this issue has already been reported:

  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1193153

Comment #35 in the report (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1193153#c35) says, that the issue has been fixed in TB 45 and should be uplifted to the TB 38 release branch. So eventually we should see this problem fixed and we can continue to write nice, cleanly formatted text-only mails.

f.

This is excellent news - thank you!

I will eagerly await TB 45 and, in the meantime, hope that the fix appears in the TB 38 branch... as I say, as of 38.5.0 it has not arrived.

Thank you once again!

M_G_W