Re: [Evolution] Odd text display character drops

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Thu, 2010-09-02 at 03:45 -0700, Brewster Gillett wrote:
> For years I have grown accustomed to annoying oddities in messages
> from people with Yahoo email accounts, generally when in reply edit
> mode. Text enclosed in dotted-line boxes which appear and disappear, and
> resist trimming edits.

Yeah, annoying isn't it.  It's down to the fact that Yahoo (and others)
send a mangled form of HTML messages with many of the bits of text (and
and advertising) in HTML tables or DIV structures.  The underlying
editor for Evo interprets the HTML, even when editing in text mode, and
tries to keep the replies and edits consistent with the original HTML.

One way around it is to highlight the text in the original message that
you want in your reply before pressing reply, then only that text will
be copied and it starts from a much saner base.

I believe also that the underlying Evo editor is changing shortly so
many of these things will go away.


> I cannot visualize what mechanism could be operating, either at
> Yahoo or in Evo, to drop some parts of a text string in one message
> as viewed by the recipient, then different parts of the same string
> in a subsequent transmission less than an hour later.

If it is text within a fixed width table, then it might cut of the text
- especially if you have a larger default text.

> I hasten to confirm that these are not manifestations occurring
> when in Reply Edit mode - this is how the text block looked in the
> two original emails as I received them.

As Xav said, look at the source of the email to see what sort of HTML
container the text is in and even if all the text is still there.

But it's probably down to stupid mangled Yahoo HTML if you ask me :-)

P.