Numbered lists are renumbered when replying

[Captain Chaos]

Binary package hint: evolution

When you reply to an HTML formatted email in which someone has used a numbered list, and you insert text between the entries of such a list, the entries get renumbered!

To reproduce:

1. Receive an HTML-formatted email with a numbered list in it. For instance, a list with three entries: 1, 2 and 3.
2. Reply to the email.
3. Insert text between the list entries in the quoted text, between items 1 and 2, and between 2 and 3.
4. Observe that the list items in the quoted text get renumbered 1, 1 and 1.

What's probably happening is that the act of inserting text between the list items makes the editor split the list into two lists, and the HTML renderer just restarts numbering at 1 at the start of each new list.

There are two potential solutions:

1. The HTML editor should make sure that when it splits an ordered list, it uses CSS styles to make the second list continue numbering where the first list ended. See for example http://www.arraystudio.com/as-workshop/make-ol-list-start-from-number-different-than-1-using-css.html

2. When replying to an HTML formatted email, Evolution should convert all ordered lists to unordered ones with the number inserted into the text. This way the numbers will stay intact when the list is split. This solution may be more robust, because it does not depend on the recipient's mail client correctly implementing the counter-reset CSS property.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Apr 30 14:52:32 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: evolution 2.28.1-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-20.58-generic
SourcePackage: evolution
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-20-generic x86_64

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Captain Chaos (launchpad-chaos)]

Alright, I've filed the bug against the GtkHtml project (as redirected by the Evolution project) here: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=617286 and added a bug watch for it.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for sent it upstream, marking this as triaged.