GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 540407
Problems reading messages in Thunderbird when arrowToLineBeginning is False
Last modified: 2009-03-10 00:05:04 UTC
Please describe the problem: In certain types of message, most notably those from Bugzilla, when you use the arrow key to cursor down through a message, the cursor position will cycle back to the top of the message. The location of this cycling back is consistent within a message, but not consisten between messages. Example messages and debug logs will be attached. Steps to reproduce: 1. Start Orca. 2. Start Thunderbird. 3. In the message list, select a message from gnome's Bugzilla. 4. Down the arrow key to listen to the message line by line. Actual results: The cursor moves down through the message line by line, with Orca reading each line, until a point in the message is reached, then the cursor moves back to the top of the message and begins down again, line by line, with Orca reading each line, despite the fact that only the down arrow has been pressed. Expected results: The cursor should move down to the bottom of the message, with Orca reading the lines of the message one at a time. Does this happen every time? yes Other information:
Created attachment 113498 [details] Example email message #1 This message file is associated with the debug file called debug-cursorproblem-1.out
Created attachment 113499 [details] debug log #1 Debug log associated with reading example email message #1. Debug log starts with Thunderbird running. A bugzilla message is opened. Read All is activated. Once the message has been completely read, control home is pressed to return the cursor to the top of the message. Then, the down arrow key is pressed repeatedly. The message is read, line by line, for a number of lines, then the cursor jumps back to the top and the same lines are read again. After the cursor has returned to the top of the message a second time, the log ends.
Created attachment 113500 [details] Example email message #2 Email message associated with debug log #2.
Created attachment 113502 [details] Debug log #2 Debug log created while testing using example email #2. When log begins, Thunderbird is running. The example email is opened. Read all is activated and the entire message is read. After completion of reading, control-home is pressed to move the cursor to the top of the message. The down arrow is pressed repeatedly, so that orca reads the message line by line until a certain point in the message is reached. The cursor then jumps back to the top of the message. Continued pressing of the down arrow key reads each line of the message until the same location is reached and the cursor jmumps back to the top of the message. After this point, the log ends.
David I can see from your debug.out's that you're not making this up. :-) But I cannot reproduce the problem. So.... Assuming you can still reproduce this, would you mind sharing your user-settings.py, orca-customizations.py, (should it exist), and any application-specific customizations you've made for Thunderbird and Firefox (i.e. from your app-settings directory? Thanks!
Created attachment 114451 [details] Example email message #3 An example email message for use with new debug log, tested using Orca trunk rev 4029 and the latest nightly builds of Thunderbird and Firefox. As an aside, when I tested this yesterday, the behavior had changed--various lines in the message would be repeated 3 or 4 times, but perseverance would get the cursor to the bottom of the message. Today's example is back to the old style.
Created attachment 114452 [details] Debug log for example message #3 Today's debug log using orca trunk rev 4029 and latest nightly for TB and FF.
Created attachment 114453 [details] Orca user settings file
Created attachment 114454 [details] Orca customizations file
Created attachment 114455 [details] Orca Shredder configuration file
Created attachment 114457 [details] Orca Thunderbird configuration file Sorry for the deluge of messages. This is the last. I don't have a Firefox configuration file in my app-settings directory. If there is any other information or any other files that you would like, just let me know. Thanks.
Aha! The difference is the arrow to line beginning setting. For me, it's true. With it set to False, I can reproduce the problem. Now to figure out what that problem is. Thanks!
Created attachment 114466 [details] [review] revision 1 This solves the problem for me, what about you? (Note, I realize that going down we're not skipping blank lines that we are skipping going up. That's part of bug 534431.)
Hi, I was going to report a similar issue I'm having with request tracker which appears to be similar to this. However first I'd like to report an issue with the bugzilla page itself. If you uncheck the "position cursor at start of line" checkbox on this additional comments text area it will loop as you arrow down over the textarea. I have applied the patch in this bug to orca. I'll try again with the patch reverted to confirm that doesn't change things.
So it helps if you actually install the patch after patching the files. With the patch applied the issue I describe above with bugzilla is fixed! Well done Jonie!!! However I am still seeing the same issue with rt as I was without the patch. I'm not sure if this is a related issue or not. You can see the issue if you visit: http://rt.easter-eggs.org/demos/stable/index.html The "10 highest tickets I own" table and other tables on the main page loop in a strange way. It doesn't actually appear to behave exactly the same each time. Sometimes more lines of the table are read before looping and sometimes less. Regards Bart
> So it helps if you actually install the patch after patching the files. *grin* > With the patch applied the issue I describe above with bugzilla is fixed! Well > done Jonie!!! Woo hoo! (and phew!) > However I am still seeing the same issue with rt as I was without the patch. > > I'm not sure if this is a related issue or not. Having taken a quick look, my gut tells me no. The document frame is claiming focus for some reason. It might be code in the page that's doing it, or it might be something we're doing that is convincing the document frame that it should claim focus. Either way, we're running with it and as a result we loop. :-( In order to keep each bug focused on its own issue, it would be extremely helpful if you could file a new bug reporting the rt issue. Thanks much!!
Hi, I'll open a new bug for my other issue. I'd also like to confirm that in thunderbird without your patch the mail generated by bugzilla for your previous comment causes looping. With the patch applied it works correctly. Bart
It works well!! Thanks, Joanie!
Thanks guys. Patch committed to trunk and moving to pending. I've also retitled the bug to reflect the specific issue (i.e. because we have other issues related to reading messages in Thunderbird using the cursor keys).