Thunderbird adds extra space before quoted text

[Yogi]

Hi there,

I started using thunderbird a few weeks ago, and it is great. Except
that it messes up my replies when I quote some text from an earlier
email.

Here is what I mean. When there is a > character in the beginning of a
line, thunderbird automatically inserts a new line and 6 space,
messing up the formatting of the message.

For example,

> Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted text here.
> Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted text here.

becomes

> Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted
text here. Quoted text here.

> Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted
text here.

which is kind of annoying. I include two images to show exactly what
thunderbird does.

This is how I composed the message:
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~yogi/tmp/2010-10-22-thunderbird-original.png

This is how thunderbird delivered the message:
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~yogi/tmp/2010-10-22-thunderbird-after-sending.png

Is there some setting that I can change? Is this an encoding problem?
I will appreciate any help.

Thanks,
Yogi

[Yogi]

On Oct 22, 12:37 pm, Yogi <yogeshwersha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I started using thunderbird a few weeks ago, and it is great. Except
> that it messes up my replies when I quote some text from an earlier
> email.
>
> Here is what I mean. When there is a > character in the beginning of a
> line, thunderbird automatically inserts a new line and 6 space,
> messing up the formatting of the message.
>
> For example,
>
> > Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted text here.
> > Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted text here.
>
> becomes
>
> > Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted
>
>       text here. Quoted text here.
>
>       > Quoted text here. Quoted text here. Quoted
>       text here.
>
> which is kind of annoying. I include two images to show exactly what
> thunderbird does.
>

> This is how I composed the message:http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~yogi/tmp/2010-10-22-thunderbird-origina...
>
> This is how thunderbird delivered the message:http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~yogi/tmp/2010-10-22-thunderbird-after-s...

>
> Is there some setting that I can change? Is this an encoding problem?
> I will appreciate any help.
>
> Thanks,
> Yogi

And oh, I am using thunderbird 3.1.5 on Ubuntu 9.10.

[g]

On 10/22/2010 04:37 PM, Yogi wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I started using thunderbird a few weeks ago, and it is great. Except
> that it messes up my replies when I quote some text from an earlier
> email.
>
> Here is what I mean. When there is a > character in the beginning of a
> line, thunderbird automatically inserts a new line and 6 space,
> messing up the formatting of the message.

you may be seeing 'line wrap', tho 'line wrap' does not normal insert
spaces.

try pressing in sequence;

<alt+e><w>

or, click in 'menu bar';

'edit > rewrap'

in compose window to see if it helps.

--

peace out.

tc,hago.

g
.

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[g]

On 10/22/2010 07:09 PM, g wrote:
> On 10/22/2010 04:37 PM, Yogi wrote:

>> Hi there,
>>
>> I started using thunderbird a few weeks ago, and it is great. Except
>> that it messes up my replies when I quote some text from an earlier
>> email.
>>
>> Here is what I mean. When there is a > character in the beginning of a
>> line, thunderbird automatically inserts a new line and 6 space,
>> messing up the formatting of the message.
>

> you may be seeing 'line wrap', tho 'line wrap' does not normal insert
> spaces.
>
> try pressing in sequence;
>
> <alt+e><w>
>
> or, click in 'menu bar';
>
> 'edit > rewrap'
>
> in compose window to see if it helps.

something else just came to mind, thunderbird does not work well with
'tab spacing'.

if message you are replying to has any 'tab spacing', it can get thrown
off in a similar fashion of what you are showing.

[Yogi]

Hi Hago,

Thanks for your reply. It turns out that I already tried 'rewrap'ing
the text, and I am not using any tab characters. So, these things
don't seem to be the source of the problem. Thanks for your thoughts
though.

Take care,
Yogi

[g]

On 10/22/2010 09:50 PM, Yogi wrote:
<snip>

welcome.

noting your headers, i see;

}> User-Agent: G2/1.0
}> X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9)
}> Gecko/20100401 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.9,gzip(gfe)

screen shots show that you are not using a normal thunderbird configuration.
header for this list shows your email composing as google groups.

so, if you are posting thru google groups, but having problems with
thunderbird and add-ons, try starting thunderbird in safe mode from a
command line;

]$ thunderbird -safe-mode

and compose a reply email to see if you still have problem.

peace out.

take care, have a good one. :)

george
.

--

[Yogi]

Hi George,

I composed the email to this newsgroup using the web interface of
google groups In particular, I did not use thunderbird. So, headers
were different than when I send mail using thunderbird.

I had not thought of starting thunderbird in safe-mode. Thanks for the
suggestion. But unfortunately, starting thunderbird in safe-mode does
not seem to change anything either.

I seem to have found a temporary fix though. In

edit > preferences > advanced > config editor

I changed the value of

editor.quotesPreformatted

from false to true. The formating is still not perfect, and I cannot
customize for example what character should prefix the quoted text,
but it is better now. Thunderbird is not introducing six space before
every line... that is a relief! :-)

Thanks for your help,
Yogi

[g]

On 10/23/2010 12:04 AM, Yogi wrote:
<snip>

hello yogi,

> I composed the email to this newsgroup using the web interface of
> google groups In particular, I did not use thunderbird. So, headers
> were different than when I send mail using thunderbird.

this i surmised. ;)

> I had not thought of starting thunderbird in safe-mode. Thanks for the
> suggestion. But unfortunately, starting thunderbird in safe-mode does
> not seem to change anything either.

welcome. at least it got you going in right direction.

> I seem to have found a temporary fix though. In
>
> edit > preferences > advanced > config editor
>
> I changed the value of
>
> editor.quotesPreformatted
>
> from false to true. The formating is still not perfect, and I cannot
> customize for example what character should prefix the quoted text,
> but it is better now. Thunderbird is not introducing six space before
> every line... that is a relief! :-)

my 'editor.quotesPreformatted' is still at false, but it is because of
of using an add-on.

which leads to this suggestion, you need an add-on to allow you to make
changes to thunderbird's 'quote' formatting.

i did not like seeing the default of using colored lines for quoting, so
i added 'quote colors' which gave me what i wanted, '>'. i believe i made
this change when i updated to 2.x versions.

have a look at this link to see if you find something to your liking.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/search/?q=quote&cat=all&lver=any&pid=1&sort=&pp=20&lup=&advanced=

surely, with 154 choices, you should be able to find what you want.

--

peace out.

tc.hago,

g
.