Saving to Draft Fixes Email Formatting
Paul Westcott
emails saved to draft becomes fixed automatically. Then when you edit
the saved email later, the lines break all over the place. Manually
editing to fix the line breaks seems to work on the screen, but when
it's finally sent, the email can look extremely messy (depending on the
amount of editing that's been done), with inconsistent line breaks
persisting.
Is there a setting or settings I can alter to overcome this problem?
Paul Westcott
Moz Champion (Dan)
?? Doesn't occur here. Messages are saved using format=flowed which
allows the line breaks to be moved as necessary to fit the window width
of the recipient.
For example, as I type this message shows psuedo line breaks here ----->
If I save the file (and it goes to drafts) I see the line breaks switch
to the far right, almost double what the arrow points to, because that
is my window width.
If I then bring the message up to re-write, it again is showing line
breaks at the arrow.
I then hit send.
When the group or anyone else gets the message, the line breaks will be
at the window width of whatever window you are using (if using a
format=flowed reader of course)
So I don't see what is 'fixed' or being fixed automatically. Have you
turned off format=flowed?
Alan Lord (News)
Where is format=flowed configured?
I see the same issues as the OP reports. Looking into TB's config I
couldn't see any option for format=flowed.
Am using TB on Ubuntu Linux and use almost always plain text email.
Cheers
Al
Moz Champion (Dan)
Read the following
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plain_text_e-mail_(Thunderbird)
and here
http://www.ts-cyberia.net/thunderbird.html
it is a user pref
// Disable format=flowed
user_pref("mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support", true);
user_pref("mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed", false);
Alan Lord (News)
<snip />
>
> Read the following
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plain_text_e-mail_(Thunderbird)
> and here
> http://www.ts-cyberia.net/thunderbird.html
>
> it is a user pref
>
> // Disable format=flowed
> user_pref("mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support", true);
> user_pref("mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed", false);
Thanks for the links. My settings are to support flowed text. i.e.
settings are reversed as above.
However, I do still see the problem the OP mentioned. When you edit a
plain text message and save it to the draft folder, then open it for
re-editing, TB does, it seems to me, insert line breaks in the message
as I have just done here.
I *suspect* that this issue occurs when replying to emails rather than
creating original messages. I will monitor and comment when I notice it
happening again.
Cheers
The Real Bev
If it's any comfort, I've noticed -- and been annoyed by -- the same thing.
Hard CRLFs seem to have been inserted. Pico (and nano) allow you to reformat
paragraphs to the current window width with a simple control-j; it would be
nice if TB did the same. [This is an insertion I made just to test -- if it
doesn't look all weird then I'll stop bothering to re-edit.]If I have a lot to
reformat I can copy to pico,
reformat and then copy it back, but that's crude!
--
Cheers, Bev
---------------------------------------
That's my opinion. Ought to be yours.
The Real Bev
> Alan Lord (News) wrote:
>
>> Moz Champion (Dan) wrote:
>> <snip />
>>>
>>> Read the following
>>> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plain_text_e-mail_(Thunderbird)
>>> and here
>>> http://www.ts-cyberia.net/thunderbird.html
>>>
>>> it is a user pref
>>>
>>> // Disable format=flowed
>>> user_pref("mailnews.display.disable_format_flowed_support", true);
>>> user_pref("mailnews.send_plaintext_flowed", false);
>>
>> Thanks for the links. My settings are to support flowed text. i.e.
>> settings are reversed as above.
Current settings for me: true-true.
>> However, I do still see the problem the OP mentioned. When you edit a
>> plain text message and save it to the draft folder, then open it for
>> re-editing, TB does, it seems to me, insert line breaks in the message
>> as I have just done here.
>>
>> I *suspect* that this issue occurs when replying to emails rather than
>> creating original messages. I will monitor and comment when I notice it
>> happening again.
>
> If it's any comfort, I've noticed -- and been annoyed by -- the same thing.
> Hard CRLFs seem to have been inserted. Pico (and nano) allow you to reformat
> paragraphs to the current window width with a simple control-j; it would be
> nice if TB did the same. [This is an insertion I made just to test -- if it
> doesn't look all weird then I'll stop bothering to re-edit.]If I have a lot to
> reformat I can copy to pico,
> reformat and then copy it back, but that's crude!
Nope, I have to tidy up those lines by hand.
Ron K.
Look in the Edit menu and try the Rewrap option. I believe it was designed
to fix the case your asking about.
--
Ron K.
Who is General Failure, and why is he searching my HDD?
Kernel Restore reported Major Error used BSOD to msg the enemy!
Joy Beeson
wrote:
> Look in the Edit menu and try the Rewrap option. I believe it was designed
> to fix the case your asking about.
"rewrap" wraps only quoted lines. I suppose I could cut everything,
paste it as quote, re-wrap, then somehow remove the quote marks -- it
would be easier than hand-deleting hard returns I can't see.
But what I *am* doing about it is studying up on how to use Alpine.
Joy Beeson, version 1.5.0.14 (20071210) (and why is it impossible to
copy and paste that?)
--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ -- sewing
http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.
Paul Westcott
> Paul Westcott keyboarded:
>> An annoying feature of TB for me is the fact that the formatting of
>> emails saved to draft becomes fixed automatically. Then when you edit
>> the saved email later, the lines break all over the place. Manually
>> editing to fix the line breaks seems to work on the screen, but when
>> it's finally sent, the email can look extremely messy (depending on
>> the amount of editing that's been done), with inconsistent line breaks
>> persisting.
>>
>> Is there a setting or settings I can alter to overcome this problem?
Thanks to all for the suggestions relating to this annoying feature, but
unfortunately, as others have noted, none of them work.
I can now see, by cutting and pasting a saved email into Word and
"revealing characters", that Thunderbird needlessly inserts hard returns
at the end of every line when the email (whether original or a reply) is
saved as Draft. That aspect has got to be eliminated in future versions.
Incidentally, cleaning up drafts which have had this annoyance imposed
on them would be a whole lot easier if it was possible to reveal
formatting characters as part of the program. I'm sure that Netscape
Communicator had that facility, but it obviously wasn't carried over
into Thunderbird.
Paul Westcott
Paul Westcott
There is one good piece of news on this front, and one not so good.
A friend who is trialling TB3 tells me that it doesn't insert hard
returns at the end of each line of an email saved to Draft. Roll on the
release of TB3.
However a "reveal formatting marks" feature still isn't included. It
would be very handy, even without the above problem. Am I correct in
thinking that it was a feature of Communicator?
Paul Westcott
g...@nospam.net
Yes, I'm almost sure that in Communicator we had the option to see the
formatting marks.
Gloria
Ron K.
No, Communicator would only display the yellow Tag Icons when custom HTML,
CSS or Javascript was inserted by use of the HTML Edit dialog during
message composition. On receipt, the View Source viewer was needed to see
the HTML markup.
Paul Westcott
> Paul Westcott wrote:
>>
>> There is one good piece of news on this front, and one not so good.
>>
>> A friend who is trialling TB3 tells me that it doesn't insert hard
>> returns at the end of each line of an email saved to Draft. Roll on
>> the release of TB3.
>>
>> However a "reveal formatting marks" feature still isn't included. It
>> would be very handy, even without the above problem. Am I correct in
>> thinking that it was a feature of Communicator?
>>
> formatting marks.
I've realised that I still have Communicator on my computer and so I've
checked. Netscape Messenger indeed has/had the facility to show
paragraph marks at least, by going to View > Show > Paragraph marks.
That facility would be very handy now, given the frequent need to remove
the hard returns which have been inserted when saving to Draft, but it
would be useful on other occasions too.
Paul Westcott
Andrew Uzilov
<p_gwestc...@REMOVETOREPLYoptusnet.com.au> wrote:
> Ron K. wrote:
> > Paul Westcott keyboarded:
> >> An annoying feature of TB for me is the fact that the formatting of
> >> emails saved to draft becomes fixed automatically. Then when you edit
> >> the saved email later, the lines break all over the place. Manually
> >> editing to fix the line breaks seems to work on the screen, but when
> >> it's finally sent, the email can look extremely messy (depending on
> >> the amount of editing that's been done), with inconsistent line breaks
> >> persisting.
>
> >> Is there a setting or settings I can alter to overcome this problem?
>
> Thanks to all for the suggestions relating to this annoying feature, but
> unfortunately, as others have noted, none of them work.
>
> I can now see, by cutting and pasting a saved email into Word and
> "revealing characters", that Thunderbird needlessly inserts hard returns
> at the end of every line when the email (whether original or a reply) is
> saved as Draft. That aspect has got to be eliminated in future versions.
I concur. I opened a bug report for this on Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=492637
I would think that I'm not the first to open a bug report on this, but
I couldn't find any record of a previous report.
Y'all should chime in in the bug's "comments" section.
Andrew Uzilov
So it appears that the Mozilla team will not be fixing this bug in TB
2 because it has been fixed in TB 3 and TB 2 is only getting security
updates now.
I just tried TB 3.0 beta 2 and the annoyance is gone in that version.
Will be using it from now on.
Paul Westcott
>
> So it appears that the Mozilla team will not be fixing this bug in TB
> 2 because it has been fixed in TB 3 and TB 2 is only getting security
> updates now.
>
> I just tried TB 3.0 beta 2 and the annoyance is gone in that version.
> Will be using it from now on.
I think I posted a month or so ago that I'd been told TB 3 doesn't fix
line lengths when saving to draft, so relief from that annoyance is at
least on the horizon. It can't come quickly enough, because I'm not
confident enough to use TB 3 beta.
Does TB 3 also allow users to reveal hidden paragraph marks as Netscape
Messenger used to do?
Paul Westcott