Forwarding message results in blank body
Paul Kinzelman
I received a message from a friend (created on a Mac) that has lots of
interesting content, but when I forward it, the body is blank. Could
Tbird be hiccuping on one of the mime sections and then failing to put
anything in the forwarded message?
Best as I can see (from the perspective of my poor knowledge of how that
all works), that the message body contains two copies, one text, one
HTML so he's sending in both formats. The message (in HTML) looks fine
in the preview and the full message window.
Even if I display it in pure text, it looks OK (but no JPGs of course),
but if I try to forward it, the forwarding body is again blank.
If you'd like to see the source of the entire message, to save space in
this forum, you can find it at:
http://www.kinzelman.com/files/testmsg.zip
Any thoughts?
Here are some of the section headers:
--Apple-Mail-117-441398618
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=UTF-8;
format=flowed;
delsp=yes
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
--Apple-Mail-117-441398618
Content-Type: multipart/related;
boundary=Apple-Mail-118-441398619;
type="text/html"
--Apple-Mail-118-441398619
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
--Apple-Mail-118-441398619
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename=concubines.jpg
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Type: image/jpeg;
x-unix-mode=0666;
name="concubines.jpg"
Content-Id: <5A46B04A-06A6-486F-85FA-701773A7FDFF>
Ron K.
> I'm running Tbird 2.0.0.23
>
> I received a message from a friend (created on a Mac) that has lots of
> interesting content, but when I forward it, the body is blank. Could
> Tbird be hiccuping on one of the mime sections and then failing to put
> anything in the forwarded message?
>
> Best as I can see (from the perspective of my poor knowledge of how that
> all works), that the message body contains two copies, one text, one
> HTML so he's sending in both formats. The message (in HTML) looks fine
> in the preview and the full message window.
>
> Even if I display it in pure text, it looks OK (but no JPGs of course),
> but if I try to forward it, the forwarding body is again blank.
>
> If you'd like to see the source of the entire message, to save space in
> this forum, you can find it at:
> http://www.kinzelman.com/files/testmsg.zip
>
> Any thoughts?
>
How Tb behaves with forwarding depends on which forwarding method You
choose. Is this happening when You use Forward Inline? The default, I
believe is Forward as Attachment.
--
Ron K.
Who is General Failure, and why is he searching my HDD?
Kernel Restore reported Major Error used BSOD to msg the enemy!
Paul Kinzelman
> Paul Kinzelman on 8/28/2009 3:04 PM, keyboarded a reply:
>> I'm running Tbird 2.0.0.23
>>
>> I received a message from a friend (created on a Mac) that has lots of
>> interesting content, but when I forward it, the body is blank. Could
>> Tbird be hiccuping on one of the mime sections and then failing to put
>> anything in the forwarded message?
>>
>> Best as I can see (from the perspective of my poor knowledge of how that
>> all works), that the message body contains two copies, one text, one
>> HTML so he's sending in both formats. The message (in HTML) looks fine
>> in the preview and the full message window.
>>
>> Even if I display it in pure text, it looks OK (but no JPGs of course),
>> but if I try to forward it, the forwarding body is again blank.
>>
>> If you'd like to see the source of the entire message, to save space in
>> this forum, you can find it at:
>> http://www.kinzelman.com/files/testmsg.zip
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>>
>
> How Tb behaves with forwarding depends on which forwarding method You
> choose. Is this happening when You use Forward Inline? The default, I
> believe is Forward as Attachment.
>
I didn't know there was that choice. I just used the 'Forward' icon.
Turns out it's inline, I haven't changed the default (didn't know I
could) and that's what I get.
So I tried forward both ways. When I explicitly forward inline, the body
is blank and no attachment (thus prompting this posting). When I forward
as attachment, it does attach a .eml file with a blank body (as expected).
I noticed that the original email has a .JPG attachment, and that image
is called forth in-line in the HTML message as well. It displays
properly when I open or preview the original message. I wonder if
something in that process could be confusing Tb forwarding. Funny it
renders it OK when reading it, but not when forwarding.
So when I forward it to myself as an attachment and receive it, now the
message has two attachments, the original .JPG image, and now the .EML
of the original message. However, when I double-click the .EML
attachment, I get something that looks kind of like RTF format, like
some stuff is bolded, some not. But the .JPG is no longer in-line (like
it was originally) and there are other images that were in-line in the
original message that are not displayed at all in the attached .EML file
when I double-click it to open.
Might there be a bug lurking in there someplace that I should post?
Thanks!
JoeS
The problem seems to be the quoted printable format that it is written in.
If you get rid of the QP it forwards just fine.
The question is "how do you do that easily"
Edit as new will remove the QP, you could then just send it as a new mail instead of forwarding.
If you must use the forward operation, you could edit as new, then send it to yourself, then forward.
I think "edit as new" then send is the way to go.
As far as a new bug...there are most likely many dups of the same type problem.
--
JoeS Using TB3
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_3.0_-_New_Features_and_Changes
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Thunderbird/Thunderbird_Binaries
Paul Kinzelman
> Yes, there are many bugs lurking in messages of this type.
> The problem seems to be the quoted printable format that it is written in.
> If you get rid of the QP it forwards just fine.
> The question is "how do you do that easily"
> Edit as new will remove the QP, you could then just send it as a new
> mail instead of forwarding.
> If you must use the forward operation, you could edit as new, then send
> it to yourself, then forward.
>
> I think "edit as new" then send is the way to go.
> As far as a new bug...there are most likely many dups of the same type
> problem.
>
>
That's a clever idea to 'edit as new', but it'd be even more clever if
it worked :-)
Looks like 'edit as new' ends up with a blank body as well. I suspect
it's using the same compose code, thus manifesting the same bug. This
area (and/or rendering HTML in general) seems to be the most problematic
of Tbird I've seen, hope somebody is working on it.
Looks like there are a number of bugs in that area. Forwarding,
especially of tables, seems problematic where I want to delete a lot of
stuff to make the email smaller. A lot of times, I can delete everything
in a table and the colored outline is still there, and I have to delete
it with "Table | Delete | Table" which is a pain.
I notice some messages are in this HTML/table format, and other messages
(like this one) are in pure text with ">" instead of the colored bar-lines.
Is there some way to force the composing window to change from colored
lines for quoted depth to pure text (like this message is)?
And as an aside, is there a way to force a 'get new messages' from a
newsgroup the same way that I can do it for normal email?
Thanks!
JoeS
Check your email.
Make sure that your view setting are set to View>>Message body as..Original html
Also that you are really in html compose mode when editing as new.
Could also be that some of these issues are fixed in TB3
If so, they probably will never get fixed in 2.0.0.xx builds.
Paul Kinzelman
>
> Check your email.
> Make sure that your view setting are set to View>>Message body
> as..Original html
> Also that you are really in html compose mode when editing as new.
How do I set 'compose in html' mode? I don't see it anywhere.
>
> Could also be that some of these issues are fixed in TB3
> If so, they probably will never get fixed in 2.0.0.xx builds.
I can forward what you sent me just fine and see it. It looks like
you diddled it quite a bit to get it to work, there's now a pile of
explicit attachments to it that weren't there before.
But when I go back to the original email, I tried all 3 settings
of View | Message Body As... and none of them forward, which is what
I'd expect because it probably tries to forward the original email
as-is. Those settings probably change only how it's viewed.
What did you change to get it to work? I'll suggest to the author
he compose email that way so more people can read it.
It's not a big deal to wait for TB3, I just wanted to make sure
somebody knew about the problem.
Also, quick aside, how do you explicitly get new messages from the
newsgroup the same way you can "Get New Messages" for email servers?
The only thing I can find is right-click news group | properties |
Offline has a "Download Now" button, will that do it? Oops, I just
tried that and it's downloading 5600 articles, not what I really want.
JoeS
> JoeS wrote:
>>
>> Check your email.
>> Make sure that your view setting are set to View>>Message body
>> as..Original html
>> Also that you are really in html compose mode when editing as new.
>
> How do I set 'compose in html' mode? I don't see it anywhere.
>
>>
>> Could also be that some of these issues are fixed in TB3
>> If so, they probably will never get fixed in 2.0.0.xx builds.
>
> I can forward what you sent me just fine and see it. It looks like
> you diddled it quite a bit to get it to work, there's now a pile of
> explicit attachments to it that weren't there before.
"edit message as new" did all the work. The original message had a lot of remote content that was pulled into
attachments in the edit operation.
The downside is that the size of the message doubled in size.
> But when I go back to the original email, I tried all 3 settings
> of View | Message Body As... and none of them forward, which is what
> I'd expect because it probably tries to forward the original email
> as-is. Those settings probably change only how it's viewed.
The forward operation attempts to "clean up" the composition, and mostly does too good a job of that.
So a simple forward results in "sanitizing" the message.
> What did you change to get it to work? I'll suggest to the author
> he compose email that way so more people can read it.
It is really hard to create html/css mails that can be viewed the same with all email clients,
let alone make them be "forwardable"
> It's not a big deal to wait for TB3, I just wanted to make sure
> somebody knew about the problem.
>
> Also, quick aside, how do you explicitly get new messages from the
> newsgroup the same way you can "Get New Messages" for email servers?
> The only thing I can find is right-click news group | properties |
> Offline has a "Download Now" button, will that do it? Oops, I just
> tried that and it's downloading 5600 articles, not what I really want.
File>>>get next xxx messages.
Paul Kinzelman
> "edit message as new" did all the work. The original message had a lot
> of remote content that was pulled into
> attachments in the edit operation.
> The downside is that the size of the message doubled in size.
So all you did was 'edit message as new' and send it to me and it worked?
When I tried that, I still got a blank body.
Or are you using TB3 to do it?
Oh, and are you saying that the original message had URLs embedded
(instead of the actual image) and so when it's rendered, it has to go to
the internet to find the images?
Ron K.
To answer the last question. Yes, the 'remote content' statement meant URL
links were present, not actual attacments.