220306 - -mail no longer processes mailto: URLs

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

In Mozilla 1.0 thru 1.4, this command string:
  mozilla -mail mailto:[e-mail]
would open a compose window with the mailto: fields loaded into their respective 
window fields.  No other window (e.g. browser or mail/news) would be opened.
As of 1.5RC1 (at the latest) and perhaps earlier, and carrying over to 1.6a, 
that command string ignores the URL and behaves exactly as
  mozilla -mail
which is to say, it opens the mail/news window.  The command string
  mozilla mailto:[e-mail]
opens both a browser window and a compose window, and so is unsuitable.

Since the -compose switch doesn't process a URL in the command line (and hasn't 
for quite some time), there is now no way to get external programs to launch a 
Mozilla compose window, short of breaking down the URL parts into the argument 
to -compose (documented at http://www.mozilla.org/docs/command-line-args.html )

I'm marking this a regression, but personally, I'd rather see bug 209403 fixed 
instead; it makes far more sense for the -compose switch to process the URL than 
the -mail switch.  I'm also calling it 'major' because this is a loss of 
functionality: there is no viable workaround.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20030916
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20030923

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This is the result of a checkin on July 12 -- revision 1.41 of
nsMessengerBootstrap.cpp.  The checkin comment is:

  -mail command line handler CAN handle args. Set this to true. This means you can
   now do: mozilla.exe -mail news://<news server> and it will work.

  This also means that clicking on news and snews urls in a browser will do the
  right thing for thunderbird.

Over to mailnews, since this is a pure mailnews issue.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Requesting a block on 1.5.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

OK, I've found a workaround:
  mozilla -browser mailto:[e-mail]
Works the same as the -mail switch used to; does not open a browser window (!).
It does open the 'ghost' window described in bug 204752.

May I suggest that this behavior is highly counterintuitive?  It seems to me 
that the -browser switch should always result in a browser window, the -mail 
switch should always result in a mail/news window, and the -compose switch 
should always result in a compose window; then, if the URL is pertinenent to the 
window type, that window should process the URL, otherwise, a window pertinent 
to the URL should also be opened.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Another situation that used to work, and can now be worked around:
It's possible to get a halfway-decent association to .EML files by loading them 
into Mozilla with a file:// URL.  I used this command string in Windows:
  mozilla.exe -mail "file:///%1"

This no longer works, but again, substituting -browser for -mail does the job.  
The actual window that displays in this case is not a standalone message window, 
nor is it strictly a browser window -- it's more like a popup window (no status 
bar, address bar, menus) but contains the message as it would be displayed 
within a regular browser window.

Comment 5

[[e-mail]]

Mozilla doesn't seem to know how to open URLs from the command line, the best it
can do is to forward them to a ghost browser window :-/

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 228009 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Scott MacGregor]

You know Mike. thunderbird -compose mailto:[e-mail] does work

it just doesn't work in the suite. I bet the following thunderbird hack is why
this works:

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/xpfe/appshell/src/nsAppShellService.cpp#1134

Not sure yet how to fix this the right way. But we'll want a generic solution
that works for seamonkey too. 

Comment 8

[Kevin Graham]

For what it's worth, it seems that this bug still exists in version 1.7 beta.  I
am using nightly build 20040421, running on Windows XP SP1.  From the windows
command line, I type "mozilla -mail mailto:[e-mail]".  A standard
Mozilla Mail/News window opens.  I do NOT get a message composition window with
the proper URL filled in, as I would expect to get.  It also does not work using
the "mailto://[e-mail]" URL format (with the slashes, instead of
just a colon).

Closely related (duplicate?) bugs that I've found are:
236774
209403
235961

As someone in one of those reports pointed out, this bug means that there is NO
way to click on a mailto link in an external browser and have Mozilla Mail/News
respond appropriately.  I hope this can be fixed soon.  Thanks!

Comment 9

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #8)
> For what it's worth, it seems that this bug still exists in version 1.7 beta.

Unless someone marks it Resolved in some way, the continued existence of this, 
or any, bug is not worth commenting on.

> bug 236774

If that bug is fixed, this bug is moot.  -compose  is obviously the better 
solution.  Unfortunately, Scott is busy with Thunderbird (which already has this 
fix in place).

> bug 235961

That's an install issue which requires either 236774 or this bug to be fixed 
first.

> As someone in one of those reports pointed out, this bug means that there
> is NO way to click on a mailto link in an external browser and have Mozilla
> Mail/News respond appropriately.

The workaround is in comment 4.

Comment 10

[Scott MacGregor]

Mike I just checked in the seamonkey code to make the suite's compose window
handle mailto urls as an argument. (trunk checkin)

Comment 11

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

The patch checked in for bug 236774 does indeed do the job.  I no longer care if 
-mail parses URLs, so I'm going to WontFix this bug.

Comment 12

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 244196 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Manuel Reimer]

-compose not longer handles mailto-URLs, so we again don't have any way to send
mailto:-URLs to mozilla. I vote for either reopening this one and setting Bug
236774 to "wontfix" or fixing Bug 236774 *and* updating the documentation:
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/command-line-args.html

Comment 14

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Comment 13 was correct for a short while, but whatever the problem was, was 
fixed.  1.8 builds have been using -compose correctly.

Comment 15

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 290745 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***