Bug 234260

Summary:	kmail replaces tabs with spaces in messages
Product:	[Applications] kdepim	Reporter:	Sami Kyöstilä <sami.kyostila>
Component:	messageviewer	Assignee:	kdepim bugs <kdepim-bugs>
Status:	REPORTED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	bart.vanassche+kde, Hi-Angel, jerome.pouiller, walch.martin
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Sami Kyöstilä 2010-04-13 16:23:05 UTC

Version:           1.12.4 (using 4.3.4 (KDE 4.3.4), Debian packages)
Compiler:          cc
OS:                Linux (i686) release 2.6.31-1-686

KMail seems to replace all tab characters with 8 spaces in received emails. I noticed this with patches sent with git send-email.

The tab characters are also gone when the email is saved to an mbox file. Strangely, however, tabs are properly in place when viewing the message source (View | View Source).

Comment 1 Laurent Montel 2015-04-12 09:56:56 UTC

Thank you for taking the time to file a bug report.

KMail2 was released in 2011, and the entire code base went through significant changes. We are currently in the process of porting to Qt5 and KF5. It is unlikely that these bugs are still valid in KMail2.

We welcome you to try out KMail 2 with the KDE 4.14 release and give your feedback.

Comment 2 Martin Walch 2015-05-22 12:06:48 UTC

This is still valid with KMail 2 on KDE 4.14: when KMail displays a message, tabs are replaced with spaces. In the source of the mail, the tabs are not replaced. They are only replaced when viewing the message.

This can be annoying when copying and pasting a patch from a mailing list, e.g. with git am as the patch fails if the code to change contains a tab.

Comment 3 Konstantin Kharlamov 2017-12-31 19:01:44 UTC

It's still present in 5.7.0

I also suggest change the wording to "REGRESSION:", because it's a regression since this bugreport https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90688

Comment 4 Konstantin Kharlamov 2017-12-31 19:04:49 UTC

(In reply to Martin Walch from comment #2)
> This is still valid with KMail 2 on KDE 4.14: when KMail displays a message,
> tabs are replaced with spaces. In the source of the mail, the tabs are not
> replaced. They are only replaced when viewing the message.

It's probably have gotten worse since this comment, because for me tabs disappear even if I send a message with tabs, i.e. they're actually replaced in the mail source, not just an odd display.