286846 - RFE: Support for vmails voice emails

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Aaron Whitehouse]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0

Wouldn't the world be a better place if Thunderbird could send Vmails? 

It occurred to me that I would love to be able to click New -> Vmail and have a
new-email-like window come up with the standard sound-recording options. I could
then click record, chat away into my microphone, and click send. On the
receiving end one of two things would happen; if they too had a decent email
program like Thunderbird then they would open it and it could automatically
start playing the message with the standard playback options of play, pause,
rewind etc. If they didn't have a compatible email client then it could display
(in other words, actually send this as the email but have Thunderbird interpret
it so as not to display it - if the header was a certain way or something) an
email with the attached Ogg-Speex file, the body of which says something along
the lines of:
---
This is a Vmail, the innovation that is sweeping the world by bringing emails
alive with the voices of friends and families. Your email client doesn't have
proper vmail support but you should be able to play the attached file in most
popular media players. If your player does not play the file you could download
[XYZ open source, Ogg-Speex capable audio player] from [...] 

Alternatively, you could upgrade your email client to Thunderbird, the free,
open source email client with built-in spam protection and full vmail support.
Download a copy from [...]

---

I would suggest that using the Ogg 'container' and the Speex codec were the
obvious choices as they are open source, patent-free formats (consistent with
Mozilla ideology). As Speex (http://www.speex.org/) was specifically designed
for the recording of speech, it would be ideal for use in vmail messages.

I think that this could be the email equivalent of tabbed browsing or live
bookmarks, as well as an excellent way of marketing Thunderbird in a way that
makes other email programs look inferior (rather than just looking like spam). 

Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce

Actual Results:  
Well... nothing

Comment 1

[u63580]

Probably a job for an extension, rather than the core of TB.  Someone would also
have to write it ...

Comment 2

[Aaron Whitehouse]

Fair comment. In fact I agree - I think the TB code should be as small as
possible and this would add a fair bit to the size. If it were to be implemented
as an extension then the message would (logically) need to include info about
the extension. If it turned out to be popular, it could always be added later.
It does mean one less feature to market on, but bloating is probably more of a
problem.

Any keen people with extension-writing ability lurking out there...?

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
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you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
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Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Comment 4

[u63580]

I'm going to NEW this, so that the issue can be decided by the devs.  I suspect
WONTFIX, but it's not up to me!