276901 - Drag and drop image in message body is not being sent (short-lived temp file)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Alistair George]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

My image client (like many others) during drag and drop places destination into
temp folder as a file eg 12345678.jpg. TB in html shows the image in msg body,
but when sent its discarded. However, if the same image is dragged and dropped
into attachment, it remains.
Suggest this is undesireable and inconsistent behaviour.
Alistair+

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Drag image to message body
2. Message body shows image, then send the message
3. Image is missing from sent.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #0)
> My image client (like many others) during drag and drop places destination
> into temp folder as a file eg 12345678.jpg.

What image client are you referring to?  Are you dragging the displayed image 
(or a selection thereof) from an image editor, like Photoshop?

Comment 2

[Alistair George]

OK I understand where u are coming from. I would expect some drag and drop
operations to mirror the source file, eg if you were viewing mypic.jpg on HD and
dragged the image, it would point to mypic.jpg, which does work OK in TB.
However, if the image is dragged dynamically, and is associated with a temp
folder image, then TB fails, whereas other mail clients I have used do not. It
can be replicated by using the progam here:
http://www.alistairgeorge.com/camsnap/camsnap.exe
Load a JPG picture, drag and drop it into a html email in TB. Conversely, you
can drag and drop the same image off into explorer and it completes the image
transfer OK.
Thank you. Alistair+

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #2)
> if the image is dragged dynamically, and is associated with a temp
> folder image, then TB fails, whereas other mail clients I have used do not.
> It can be replicated by using ... camsnap.exe
> Load a JPG picture, drag and drop it into a html email in TB. Conversely, you
> can drag and drop the same image off into explorer and it completes the image
> transfer OK.

I see.  The program creates a temporary file that exists only during the 
dragging process.  Thunderbird doesn't store the image, it stores an <img> tag 
with an href pointing to the file; on sending, it converts the href to a cid: 
URL pointing to a message part, and reads the file to convert it to base64 data 
for sending.  But by the time it actually sends, the file is gone.

It does show the image in the compose window; I guess the temp file is read to 
verify that it's a valid image, and it gets cached.  I suppose that data could 
be used in the same way TB now supports direct pasting of image data from the 
clipboard.  So, I'll confirm this.

Reproduced with TB 1.0 and Moz 1.8b-0120; moving to Core.

Comment 4

[Alistair George]

Mike, problems I'd expect with the clipboard possibility is that with several
dropped files, the oldest get dropped off the clipboard. It does raise an
interesting question about the API though, as I mentioned earlier, every other
mail program I used does not have that problem, so how they resolve it I'm at a
loss to explain.
I will raise the question on Delphi users group to see if anyone knows.
Cheers,
Alistair+

Comment 5

[buovjaga]

CamSnap was stored in the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://alistairgeorge.com/camsnap/camsnap.exe

I tested by taking a snap with my webcam, then dragging it from the display area to an html composition window. I closed CampSnap and waited for several minutes before sending the email.

The image is in the received email.

Closing as WFM.

Thunderbird 52.1.0 (32-bit)
Windows 7 64-bit