paragraph spacing
I am struggling trying to get a consistent format in Thunderbird. First of all let me say that I am happy with the default use of paragraph style and if I want to have occasional single spacing I can use shift-enter instead of enter. Most queries on formatting seem to be about getting single spacing all the time. That is not my issue. That means that if I compose an email from scratch everything is just the way I want it, using the default settings. The problem arises when I reply to an email. The settings then seem to be ignored. For instance the line spacing can be fixed to single spacing whether I select paragraph or body text and no matter what I do I can't get it to follow the default behaviour. Also, I noticed that the font goes to "sans-serifArial" instead of the usual "Variable Width". In fact if I try to select "Variable Width" in the Format menu it is just ignored. How do I get the default composition settings when I reply to an incoming email?
All Replies (8)
I would like some help here! Is this a bug or should I be able to get the paragraph style to revert to its default settings when I am replying to a message?
Does that also happen in Troubleshoot mode (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird)? If so, you could report it as a possible bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi/.
It does happen in Troubleshoot mode. When I reply to a message, it seems that the formatting defaults to whatever the sender used and I have no way of changing it.
Odd. Try this:
- go to TB menu > Settings > General > Language & Appearance > Fonts > Advanced button
- at the top, set 'Fonts for:' to Latin if it isn't already
- change Proportional and Monospace fonts/sizes
- set Minimum font size to None
- at the top, change set 'Fonts for:' to Other Writing Systems
- repeat the process of changing fonts/sizes
- at the bottom, make sure 'Allow messages to use other fonts' is disabled if desired > OK > close the popup
- set TB menu > Settings > Composition > HTML Style to Variable Width and Medium font
Ed, thanks for the suggestion. It didn't solve the problem. It seems that if someone sends me a message using "body text" format then when I reply to it my "paragraph" format becomes the same as "body text". They both have single line spacing and I can find no way of getting back to the default "paragraph" format (until I start a completely new email).
Hmm, I can't reproduce it. Which OS and TB version? Are you using a signature?
I'm using Linux (Debian Bookworm) and Thunderbird 128.11.0esr. I don't use a signature.
I may have found a clue to what is going on but I don't know the significance of it. When playing round with some of the offending emails, I tried to select forward instead of reply. This gives me a box with Subject, From, Date and To, followed by one or two lines of space and then the original email. If I delete all of the space between the box and the text of the original email then I can type in the space above the box and the paragraph style behaves properly.
If I select reply, then to get the paragraph style to behave properly, I have to remove all of the quoted text from the original email, leaving me with an empty page.
Although I don't use a signature, it seems that the offending emails might all have a signature or some other pieces with special formatting.
If someone is interested, I could now create a dummy email with no real content that has the problem and send it if I am given an email address to send it to, say by private message.
At this point, I would suggest reporting it as a possible bug.