TBird has suddenly stopped wrapping long lines. Why?
For reasons I don't understand, TBird has suddenly changed its behavior in displaying plain-text messages as they are being composed. It used to be that TBird would wrap long lines to the window width, whatever that happened to be. If for example, I reduced the width of the window, TBird would automatically rewrap the lines to fit.
Now, however, TBird uses a specific width (NOT character count) and wraps all lines to that width. If I reduce the window width, a horizontal scroll bar appears and the lines do not rewrap. If I increase the window width, TBird continues to wrap the lines at its chosen width, leaving blank space to the right of the lines. I've made no changes to about:config.
Why is it doing this, and how can I stop it? Settings from about:config are:
mail.compose.wrap_to_window_width; true
mail.wrap_long_lines; true
mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support; false
mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed; true
plain_text.wrap_long_lines; false
I've tried TBird with the last setting = true, but this didn't help. I've also tried TBird with addons disabled; again, no better.
Modified by coffent
Chosen solution
I notice in the release notes for TB 52 this item is 'Fixed': "Long lines in plain text replies not properly wrapped". I suspect the 'fix' has introduced unexpected effects such as the one you see. You can get TB 45 here and install it over your existing version (disable auto updates), or modify the preference mailnews.wraplength to a value that is greater than its default, 72.
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Try the add-on Toggle Word Wrap.
I looked at the article (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plain_text_e-mail_(Thunderbird)#Flowed_format), but the poster has all the correct settings.
I have an older version of Thunderbird (45.8.0) installed on my laptop, and it works fine - lines automatically wrap as they are supposed to. I used ExamDiff Pro to check for any differences in the prefs.js files for the two installations. It found no differences that seemed at all relevant to the problem.
I'm guessing there may be a bug in v. 52.1.1. Is there a way of reverting to an earlier version of Thunderbird, or failing that, is there a way of downloading an earlier version from the Mozilla website? I don't see one.
Thanks again.
Chosen Solution
I notice in the release notes for TB 52 this item is 'Fixed': "Long lines in plain text replies not properly wrapped". I suspect the 'fix' has introduced unexpected effects such as the one you see. You can get TB 45 here and install it over your existing version (disable auto updates), or modify the preference mailnews.wraplength to a value that is greater than its default, 72.
Thanks. I reinstalled v. 45.8 and things work again as they should. Definitely a bug in v. 52.1!
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1367891
Going back to TB 45 and disabling updates is questionable since you will be exposed to new security threats forever. Please suggest this only as a temporary measure while a bug is being investigated/fixed.
Modified by Jorg K
I left some comments in the bug:
mailnews.wraplength = 72 wraps to a width of 72 characters, mailnews.wraplength = 0 wraps to the window mailnews.wraplength = -1 doesn't wrap at all.
As far as I'm aware that hasn't changed between version 45 and 52. The only thing that was changed concerned the way we wrap long quoted lines in a reply as per the release notes: FIXED: "Long lines in plain text replies not properly wrapped"
It's news to me that mailnews.wraplength can be 0 or -1, as this isn't documented anywhere I'm aware of (see this article and also here). But a setting of 0 does indeed have the desired effect, whereas before TB 52, I believe mail.compose.wrap_to_window_width = true overrode the setting for mailnews.wraplength. When does plain_text.wrap_long_lines have an effect?
It would be helpful to know which preferences control wrapping in plain text messages, composed or received, and which ones are ignored or deprecated.
If you check for preferences with "wrap" in their name you find:
- mail.wrap_long_lines - no idea, seems to have some effect in MIME
- mailnews.wraplength - the one to use
- plain_text.wrap_long_lines - no idea, seems to switch something in M-C
- view_source.wrap_long_lines - effects source view in FF and perhaps TB.
mail.compose.wrap_to_window_width was removed in bug 233705 since it was a workaround for the reply problem I mentioned.
So perhaps the reporter had that set and it doesn't work any more in TB 52.
Sorry I've been out of the loop for the past few days as I've been out of town without access to my desktop computer. As I mentioned, I reverted to v45 and that fixed the problem. Based on Jorg K's reply, I checked mailnews.wraplength and found it was set to 110. In v45 line wrap works just fine with this setting. I've now tried going back again to v52, where I find that indeed wraplength must be set to 0 for line wrap to work.
coffent said
In v45 line wrap works just fine with this setting.
Yes, because you were additionally using mail.compose.wrap_to_window_width which is no longer available since it caused other problems.