Open Bug 1756132 Opened 4 years ago Updated 1 year ago

Support 'nntp' URIs (RFC 5538)

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, enhancement)

Product:
MailNews Core
Component:
Networking: NNTP
Version:
Thunderbird 91
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: manikulin, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug,
URL
)

Details

Steps to reproduce:

Please, add a way to open a news messages that are not from subscribed groups or outside of fetched message range (old message in an active group). E.g. w3m allows to do it

w3m -m 'nntp://news.gmane.io/83mtiq0zhd.fsf@gnu.org'
w3m -m 'nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.devel/286415'
w3m -m 'nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.devel/83mtiq0zhd.fsf%40gnu.org'

Actual results:

All kind of reactions but not opening messages

thunderbird 'news://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.orgmode/126408'

No reaction at all when a group is not included into subscriptions. For a subscribed group it causes a dialogue "Would you like to subscribe to gmane.emacs.orgmode/126408?". Such prompt may sense when only group name without article number or message-id is specified. For news://host or nntp://host similar popup may offer to create a new account.

thunderbird 'nntp://news.gmane.io:119/83mtiq0zhd.fsf@gnu.org'

Message is fetched but not displayed if the group is outside of subscriptions, otherwise it may cause not reaction at all

thunderbird 'news://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.orgmode/87r216ilxn.fsf%40gmail.com'

Attempt to fetch but something combined is sent instead of article identifier

mailnews.nntp: C: ARTICLE <gmane.emacs.orgmode/87r216ilxn.fsf@gmail.com> NntpClient.jsm:219:20
mailnews.nntp: S: 430 No such article NntpClient.jsm:146:20

Expected results:

  • Both news: and nntp: schemes may be supported. However group/number location is formally allowed for nntp: only.
  • Handler is tolerant to variation in URI encoding, e.g. it allows both @ and %40.
  • The feature is clearly documented to avoid ambiguity whether e.g. -news option is required.
  • It makes possible to open messages from References headers that are too old and not included to fetched messages
  • It would be nice to be able to open similar links received in mail (or news) messages.

rfc5538 even allows specifying messages by just Message-ID without host name, and it may work when thunderbird has just one NNTP server configured.

See also Bug #1756126

When message is withing fetched range for a group included into subscription it can be opened using mid: scheme, but it requires edition of the link.

The following quote is partially out of its context:

Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] Bug #1743312 comment #12

Users can use TB as a simple calendar or address book application without setting up any account.

It describes what I would like to have. OK, it should work even if a user has account for the same new server. There are various corner cases such as Bug #1752806 comment #5 when thunderbird caches somewhere attempts to display a message before subscribing.

See Also: → 1756126

I just realized that thunderbird-91.7.0 started with a clean profile in response to e.g. thunderbird 'news://news.gmane.io:119/f0597d96-a287-2c48-7897-6b8737c95217%40posteo.eu' shows additional wizard window but on cancel displays the message. The version 100.0a1 just displays blank message window. So behavior of thunderbird-91 a bit closer to the goal, however I suspect some problems after such command.

I was trying to reproduce the Bug 1758097 with the ESR version.

A wild guess: behavior difference in comparison to thunderbird-91 might be caused by the Bug 41133 fixed in the version 94.

(In reply to max from comment #4)

A wild guess: behavior difference in comparison to thunderbird-91 might be caused by the Bug 41133 fixed in the version 94.

If my guess is correct than Bug 1760393 may change behavior related to opening of an arbitrary news message.

It seems in 101.0a1 behavior has been improved likely due to patches for the Bug #1762114.

  • URIs news://host/Message-ID work with @ and with %40 and opens a new window (while mid: URIs are opened in new tabs) with the message. They did not prevent creating of an account for the same host any more (Bug 1760393). Links with explicit group name do not work though.
  • -news option was removed, see Bug #1756422
See Also: → 1785790

Apart from nntp: URIs, is there anything still missing after bug 1886132 has landed?

Flags: needinfo?(manikulin)

So some cases have not fixed in 127.0b3.

Flags: needinfo?(manikulin)

If there is no account for a NNTP server then some files and directories for this server are created in [ProfD]/News. I would prefer to avoid build up of such kind of garbage in the profile directory.

(In reply to max from comment #8)

Actually both of them should fail since they are no valid 'news' URIs, if I understand RFC5538 correctly.

(In reply to Hartmut Welpmann [:welpy-cw] from comment #10)

(In reply to max from comment #8)

Actually both of them should fail since they are no valid 'news' URIs, if I understand RFC5538 correctly.

I do not mind, but there are complications, so these kind of URIs may have sense. Handling varies across applications.

  • nntp: URI scheme is blocked by Chrome, so group/article-number variant becomes inaccessible if the RFC is strictly followed.
  • Thunderbird does not handle nntp links to articles yet.
  • I am unsure if @ or %40 should be used in Message-ID. A lot of web applications breaks or completely hides anything containing @ aiming to protect themselves against e-mail address scrapers. Despite I prefer links based on Message-ID, sometimes article numbers may be a workaround.
  • I have no idea why w3m developers chose to support nntp: scheme only. When group name is specified in addition to Message-ID, GROUP command is issued before ARTICLE.
  • E.g. Emacs allows retrieving articles by their Message-ID through nntp: scheme, see url docs.
  • Originally server part was not allowed for news: scheme, see RFC1738.

Permissive policy in respect to accepted URI variants might be reasonable. Certainly there are some issues like forward slashes in Message-IDs that should not be confused with group/ID separator.

(In reply to max from comment #11)

Permissive policy in respect to accepted URI variants might be reasonable.

While I think Thunderbird should just follow the current standards, more flexible solutions are achievable by add-ons, see https://github.com/Welpy-cw/Open-by-Message-ID for example.

(In reply to Hartmut Welpmann [:welpy-cw] from comment #12)

(In reply to max from comment #11)

Permissive policy in respect to accepted URI variants might be reasonable.

While I think Thunderbird should just follow the current standards, more flexible solutions are achievable by add-ons, see https://github.com/Welpy-cw/Open-by-Message-ID for example.

This add-on requires Experiments API. I do not think extensions may affect handling command line arguments for news: and nntp: URIs. Only web+something and ext+something schemes are possible with some glitches related to UX.

The RFC was written before nntp: links were considered unsafe by browser developers (to prevent attacks to servers).

However supporting of nntp: command line arguments is still useful if your are strongly against extending news: for URIs with article numbers. There are still enough broken http links to gmane with article numbers. They may be converted to nntp:, but thunderbird, being a news reader, does not understand nntp: URIs.

(In reply to max from comment #13)

This add-on requires Experiments API.

This is about to change ultimately, see bug 1901822.

I do not think extensions may affect handling command line arguments for news: and nntp: URIs.

I am aware of that. Couldn't similar functionality be achieved with some clever scripting?

However supporting of nntp: command line arguments is still useful if your are strongly against extending news: for URIs with article numbers. There are still enough broken http links to gmane with article numbers. They may be converted to nntp:, but thunderbird, being a news reader, does not understand nntp: URIs.

I suggest keeping this bug primarily about that, and changing the title accordingly.

Blocks: 108948
URL: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html...
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Component: Untriaged → Networking: NNTP
Ever confirmed: true
Product: Thunderbird → MailNews Core
Summary: Allow opening news message by URI without subscription → Support 'nntp' URIs (RFC 5538)
Severity: -- → N/A
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