Elena, thanks for your report. Assigning to the HTML editor component lead.

Hi Helen and Elena,

It looks like TinyMCE might not cause this problem at all - it renders valid code and shows valid code in editor itself but some styles vanish on pages of moodle
Looking at source only option 4) is shown correctly in moodle

1) <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>Test text</strong></em></span></p>
2) <p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em>Test text</em></span></strong></p>
3) <p><em><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Test text</span></strong></em></p>
4) <p style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Test text</p>

even if all of these are shown ok on any web page. It is possible to edit valid_elements code in tinymce init code to make tinymce render only style tags 4) but it does not make much sense since <em> and <strong>should be ok as well. Strange!

Attached a simple html file that can be opened separately with any browser - those same tags should look ok there (similar underlined, bold and italics style Test text)

And in attached image 1_2_3_4.jpg the result that moodle renders. They should all look like example 4)

Could some filter cause this ???

My test instance had no filters active - and it was doing the same :/

Firebug seems to show that a css rule is resetting em to font-style: normal

http://localhost/moodle/theme/yui_combo.php?3.2.0/build/cssreset/reset-min.css&3.2.0/build/cssfonts/fonts-min.css&3.2.0/build/cssgrids/grids-min.css&3.2.0/build/cssbase/base-min.css, line 8:

address, caption, cite, code, dfn, em, strong, th, var

This yui reset code is really starting to stink 8-[

Just as stuped css rules as superscript and subscript reset code in http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-25565

These tags are supported in all major browsers and one yui reset rules breaks css of all such tags where you have tags different font-styles or font-weights inside each other.

I'm attaching a patch based on Orestes Mas' suggestion in this discussion: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=168169

I did some basic testing and it seems to work.

Increasing priority as this has been reported as a problem for a MP. Please test patch asap.

Please give this issue priority; reported as a problem on MP sites.

Just a note to say that we are planning to give this some attention after Moodle 2.1 is released.

We have just updated the TinyMCE editor component and we will be reviewing issues related to that component after 2.1.

Michael;

This issue is a YUI bug in CSS. There are quite a few discussions in internet. Unfortunately it is not fixed in 3.3.0.

In order not to loose changes when the YUI is upgraded, the CSS fix is added to the base theme css.

TinyMCE has nothing to do with that. In fact, if you look at the html source you will see that all tags are present.

Integrated, thanks.

Tested in all supported browsers - fails only in IE6&7 which is fine.