Sometimes leftmost characters of reply are hidden at left

[OldGrantonian]

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Normally when I reply to emails, the first character that I type has a small left margin. But with some emails, there's no margin and all or part of the leftmost character might be missing. There's no horizontal scroll bar.

The normal Thunderbird reply is something like: "On 14/12/2017 18:01......."

In that case, about the first quarter of the "O" will not be visible at the left.

If I type "On" above the TB reply, my "On" lines up exactly with the TB "On" below it.

This only happens in about 5% of emails. Such an email is usually from companies. There will be header block with the some text - similar to the "mozillaZine" block at the top of forum pages.

I sent such an email to my daughter. She replied that she could see all the leftmost characters in her Apple client.

Is there some setting that I need to change in order to always see the leftmost character in the reply?

Thanks.
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[tanstaafl]

This might be a side effect of some of the HTML code in the quoted text. Especially since companies frequently have much more complicated HTML messages. Does the problem go away if you don't have any quoted text in the reply?

[OldGrantonian]

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Thanks for your response.

Does the problem go away if you don't have any quoted text in the reply?

I don't use the quoted text feature. I simply click "Reply", and then do my quoting (if any) after that. After clicking Reply, there are the usual 2 blank lines with the cursor at top left. For the problem emails, the cursor is hidden at the left.

If I forward a "problem" email to myself, the leftmost character of any text typed by me is partially hidden when it arrives. (Note: none of the forwarded original email is ever hidden.)

IMHO, this is a TB problem. Reason 1: I'm using TB as a gmail client. If I forward a "faulty" email using the online gmail, the position of any text typed by me is the same as if I had opened a new email in gmail. In both cases, there's a small left margin (about the width of a "B"). Reason 2: the problem does not occur in an Apple client.

Although I don't normally use the quoting feature, I tried it as a test. I quoted the topmost line of the email: "Can't view this email properly?". Result: no problem. The margin is present and the cursor is visible.

I discarded the test email, and tried again from further down the page - deep within all the fancy coloured stuff. Same result - all OK.

So, I suppose I've just found my workaround. For any problem email, I will simply discard the first attempt and reforward, quoting any junk text from the original email. Then delete the quote.

However, if anyone finds a more elegant solution - please fire away

Thanks.
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