David Baron's Weblog

Fifteen years

Thursday, 2013-09-19, 17:26 -0700

After a few weeks of testing NGLayout (also known as Gecko) builds and discussing them on newsgroups, I filed my first Mozilla bug fifteen years ago.

Back then, the bugmail looked like this:

From nobody@mozilla.org  Sat Sep 19 20:27:07 1998
Return-Path: nobody@mozilla.org
Received: from lounge.mozilla.org (h-207-200-73-153.netscape.com
        [207.200.73.153]) by smtp2.fas.harvard.edu with ESMTP id UAA12670; Sat,
        19 Sep 1998 20:27:06 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from nobody@localhost)
        by lounge.mozilla.org with  id RAA17349;
        Sat, 19 Sep 1998 17:26:35 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 17:26:35 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199809200026.RAA17349@lounge.mozilla.org>
From: bugzilla-daemon@mozilla.org
To: rickg@netscape.com, dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
Cc: dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
Subject: [Bug 845] New - CSS Parser ignoring first declaration in STYLE element
        surrounded by comments
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

http://cvs-mirror.mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=845

*** shadow/845  Sat Sep 19 17:26:35 1998
--- shadow/845.tmp.17346        Sat Sep 19 17:26:35 1998
***************
*** 0 ****
--- 1,26 ----
+ Bug#: 845
+ Product: NGLayout
+ Version: other
+ Platform: PC
+ OS/Version: Windows 95
+ Status: NEW
+ Resolution:
+ Severity: normal
+ Priority: P2
+ Component: Parser
+ Area:
+ AssignedTo: rickg@netscape.com
+ ReportedBy: dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
+ URL: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dbaron/bugpages/nglayout/index2.html
+ Cc: ARRAY(0x2504b0)
+ Summary: CSS Parser ignoring first declaration in STYLE element surrounded by comments
+
+ When CSS in a STYLE element is enclosed in SGML comments (as described at the
+ end of section 1.1 in http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1#containment-in-html ), the
+ first declaration is ignored.  See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1#containment-in-
+ html , where the P elements (about half of the page) should be red.
+
+ (I didn't test other pages to see if this happens all the time.)
+
+ (I also didn't know whether to file this under Parser or Style System.)&#137;
+

This was before context diffs (as opposed to unified diffs) had gone completely out of style. This becomes clearer when you see the following change I got for this bug:

From nobody@mozilla.org  Fri Sep 25 22:52:53 1998
Return-Path: nobody@mozilla.org
Received: from lounge.mozilla.org (h-207-200-73-153.netscape.com [207.200.73.153]) by smtp3.fas.harvard.edu with ESMTP id WAA08573; Fri, 25 Sep 1998 22:52:52 -0400 (EDT)
Received: (from nobody@localhost)
        by lounge.mozilla.org with  id TAA20499;
        Fri, 25 Sep 1998 19:52:16 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1998 19:52:16 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199809260252.TAA20499@lounge.mozilla.org>
From: bugzilla-daemon@mozilla.org
To: peterl@netscape.com, dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
Cc: dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
Subject: [Bug 845] Changed - CSS Parser ignoring first declaration in STYLE element surrounded by comments
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

http://cvs-mirror.mozilla.org/webtools/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=845

*** shadow/845  Sat Sep 19 17:26:35 1998
--- shadow/845.tmp.20496        Fri Sep 25 19:52:16 1998
***************
*** 9,18 ****
  Priority: P2
  Component: Parser
  Area:
! AssignedTo: rickg@netscape.com
  ReportedBy: dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
  URL: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dbaron/bugpages/nglayout/index2.html
! Cc: ARRAY(0x2504b0)
  Summary: CSS Parser ignoring first declaration in STYLE element surrounded by comments

  When CSS in a STYLE element is enclosed in SGML comments (as described at the
--- 9,18 ----
  Priority: P2
  Component: Parser
  Area:
! AssignedTo: peterl@netscape.com
  ReportedBy: dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
  URL: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dbaron/bugpages/nglayout/index2.html
! Cc: dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
  Summary: CSS Parser ignoring first declaration in STYLE element surrounded by comments

  When CSS in a STYLE element is enclosed in SGML comments (as described at the

Mozilla and the Web have come a long way in the last fifteen years. And so has Bugzilla.