Thunderbird/Enigmail deletes formatting of HTML email when replying to encrypted plaintext email

[Matthias Bergt]

Dear all,

We have the following issue with Thunderbird 17.0.2 and Enigmail 1.5 (20121227-0013) - MacOS X (different versions):

When I reply to an encrypted plaintext message, Thunderbird opens a HTML message (which it is supposed to do), includes the HTML signature (which it is supposed to do) - and then immediately deletes the HTML formatting used in the signature and replaces it by *, _ etc (which doesn't make sense as it's a HTML email, thus supports formatting).

When I reply to an encrypted HTML message, everything is fine.

Obviously, Engimail checks the format of the original email and not the format of the email actually being sent for determining whether to delete/transform the formatting.

I think deleting the formatting doesn't make sense at all:

• Only a HTML email may include formatting, hence if there is formatted text, there is no need to delete the formatting.

• If the email is a plaintext email, there cannot be any formatting, hence there is no need to delete it.

I would be glad if the developers (thank you for your great work, btw) would solve this problem.

Thanks.

[Patrick Brunschwig]

Enigmail does not actively delete the formatting. However, it removes
the PGP boundaries and copies the rest back to the editor. And this
operation works on the plain text only. Workaround: press Ctrl+Z (undo).

[Matthias Bergt]

Patrick,

Thank you very much for the explanation. Now I understand what is happening. Unfortunately, the workaround doesn't work: The first CTRL-Z deletes the original message; the second CTRL-Z inserts the encrypted original message and restores the formatting. Hence, there is no way to have both formatting and unencrypted original email.

I just noticed that with PGP/MIME emails, Enigmail works differently: While a PGP/MIME encrypted email seems to be 1. decrypted and 2. used for creating a reply, an encrypted plaintext message seems to be 1. used for creating a reply and 2. decrypted, which causes the problem I described.

I wonder whether it is possible
a) to change the sequence of message creation and decryption
or
b) not to convert the whole message to plaintext and then extract the encrypted part but only to convert the encrypted part?

Personally, I prefer plaintext messages, but if we want to convince more people to use encryption, I think it is important to avoid formatting issues.

Regards,
Matthias