Report-an-Apple-Bug-Friday for September 2, 2005

Saturday, September 3, 2005 in Apple | No comments

I know it’s technically Saturday on the East Coast, but we’re close enough to call it Report-an-Apple-Bug-Friday. Today’s bug is particularly harmless but still annoying. Everything that can improve the Mac OS X user experience is a good thing, so even if this issue is only cosmetic, it’s still worth reporting it.

In addition, I will try to adopt Apple’s guidelines for bug reports, which go along the lines of Summary, Steps to Reproduce, Expected Results, Actual Results, Regression and Notes. Those subdivisions are a good idea for both the person who submits the report and for the person who will read the report, as they will encourage a more complete and structured exercise on both ends which will ultimately lead to faster bug fixing.

You can find more Report-an-Apple-Bug-Fridays by checking out the new del.icio.us tag applebugfriday.

One last note before the report - I won’t be posting them on the main content section anymore, since they could be lengthy. Read on!


Summary

Mail does not honor the “Always match my default message font” preference when using Plain Text composing by default and a monospaced font such as Monaco 10 when changing the default account from which to send a new message.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Mail, configure at least 2 accounts.
  2. Create a signature and set it as the signature for every account.
  3. Enable the “Always match my default message font” preference in “All Signatures” and for every account.
  4. In Composing, select Plain Text as the Message Format.
  5. In Fonts & Colors, enable “Use fixed-width font for plain text messages” and configure it to Monaco, 10.
  6. Create a new message. Enter the content field.
  7. Type some text.
  8. From the Account pop-up menu, select a different account.
  9. Notice that the signature’s style changes.

Expected Results

The signature’s style should have remained the same as the message style, e.g. Monaco 10.

Actual Results

The signature’s style visibly changed to the default rich text format, Helvetica 12.

Regression

I have only tested this on one computer running Mac OS X 10.4.2, e.g. Mail 734.

Notes

Radar #4244017

Screenshots!

Mailscreensnapz001
Signature preferences

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Fonts & Colors preferences

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Composing preferences

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Initial state of a new message

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Message after changing the email account