This is a summary of a long discussion between Don and me on #debian-boot
earlier today [1] on #debian-boot.

The problem is that quite regularly bugs are filed that are html only or
text/html and have missing line feeds.
This often makes the headers invalid, leading to completely broken initial
assignment of bugs, which also means that in a lot of cases the relevant
developers never get to see the original report, but only the reassignment
by one of the BTS janitors.
It also makes the report rather unreadable in general.

Examples (but there are many more):
- http://bugs.debian.org/457057
- http://bugs.debian.org/464023

There are different possible solutions, each with their own (dis)advantages.
They are listed in my personal order of preference.
1) detect and reject the initial report
   pro: clear; avoids any uncertainties about the further handling of the
        report; no blame with maintainers for not responding (to something
        of which he's often completely unaware); places effort with person
        causing the problem; does not waste scarce project resources (human)
        on interpreting and replying to unreadable messages
   con: harsh and leaves user somehat in the cold
2) automatically correct the problem, at least for the Package: header
   pro: the maintainer will at least get to see the original report; more
        friendly towards users
   con: may still leave teh maintainer with an often unreadable report which
        does not invite anyone taking responsibility (especially a problem
        in teams); "rewards" the use of completely broken MUAs and services
3) make sure that the maintainer gets to see the original message by
   changing the way reassigns are handled
   Although I'm very much in favor of doing this for its own sake (I've
   advocated this before), I don't think this does anything to address the
   issue. It still leaves the maintainer with a fundamentally broken BR.

Don: it's OK with me if you want to attach the log from our conversation.

Cheers,
FJP

[1] For Don that's probably still true, for me it's actually about 4 hours
into tomorrow, but well.

severity 468279 normal
thanks

The Web interface of certain e-mail servers allows for constructing only HTML messages. An end user can't draft a text message via the Web interface but has to fire up an e-mail client, which is sometimes difficult (e.g., in case of boot issues, it might require getting a Debian-Live USB thumb drive or another machine first and setting up an e-mail client). An example of such an e-mail server is Rambler.

As a result of submitting a bug report from a Web interface, single line breaks in the report get replaced by spaces, and multiple consecutive line breaks get combined into one line break.

My examples: http://bugs.debian.org/985150#73 and http://bugs.debian.org/1035893 . Though you can take a look at the original HTML, it's not immediately visible.

Any way out? How to get empty lines (ideally, without trying to insert invisible stuff) into HTML bug reports? (Not sure whether Rambler can be blamed, too. Moreover, though they may be asked, I'm not sure what specifically to ask for, and I'd probably be the wrong person to ask.)

Increasing the severity as the issue affects more than one person—for many years now.