366126 - display svg inline

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Build Config, enhancement)

Description

[jonathan chetwynd]

Mozilla supports SVG natively
could svg code and attachments display inline?

this could be a considerable enhancement for everyone.
But particularly for people with low literacy who prefer illustrations or symbols with their text.

web examples include http://www.peepo.co.uk and http://www.peepo.com

there have been attempts to develop specialist email clients for symbol users in the past.

Comment 1

[jonathan chetwynd]

Scott,

is there anything to be done, to move this along?

Comment 2

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Do you build on Windows? Step one is to count the cost: build the Windows installer, build the Windows installer with SVG enabled, subtract a from b. (Cost on Linux would be interesting, but not a deal-breaker; the Mac .dmg is so huge already it would be hard to significantly affect it.)

Comment 3

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Oh, and Scott doesn't get mail on UNCO, so I guess step zero is to not file UNCO ;)

Comment 5

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Mmm, 122.7KB. That's a bit beyond my "sure, why not?" limit.

So, do some selling. What other mail clients display SVG? What mail clients are based on a toolkit that would let them, if they choose? Who sends SVG mail? Who puts SVG in their RSS/Atom feeds? Who is making community builds of Thunderbird with SVG enabled, and what do they say their download numbers are like?

Comment 6

[jonathan chetwynd]

Opera and Safari-Webkit support SVG natively so I would expect their email clients could be SVG enabled. 


believe I have placed enhancement bugs with each.

Comment 7

[jonathan chetwynd]

This quote is a typical response:

"The largest single group of pupils with additional support needs
in Scotland are those with moderate/severe learning difficulties (25%), who
are likely to benefit from symbol support."

evidently there is a chicken and egg scenario, without symbol (SVG) support it's difficult to provide evidence of use. ~:"

Comment 8

[jonathan chetwynd]

OS X Mail.app with webkit is now able to display html emails with remote SVG embedded.

bdash and MacDome researching whether fully embeded SVG might be supported.

Comment 9

[jonathan chetwynd]

Attachment: email known to display SVG in OS X Mail.app with webkit

instructions are in the email

Comment 10

[jonathan chetwynd]

Attachment: email known to display SVG in OS X Mail.app with webkit

instructions in email

Comment 11

[jonathan chetwynd]

http://lists.becta.org.uk/pipermail/senit/2007-September/011834.html

follow thread to read a number of requests, endorsements etc. all based around the benefits of embedding symbols in email.

Comment 12

[jonathan chetwynd]

#5 Phil,

if mozilla is installed, then couldn't thunderbird be launched with path to svg component from mozilla?

as with Mail.app which is started with link to webkit:

open terminal and start Mail application with webkit
myterminal$ DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH=/path/to/WebKit.app/Contents/Resources /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail

Comment 13

[jonathan chetwynd]

it seems it may be possible to build thunderbird with svg support:
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/xsoft/thunderbird.html

Comment 14

[jonathan chetwynd]

apologies to tor and jwatt, 

why isn't thunderbird SVG enabled?

(rather than a special build)

Comment 15

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Yes, it's possible: that's how I was able to do it, and calculate how much it costs us in increased build size. It isn't enabled by default because nobody has presented a convincing reason for it to be, including you, I'm afraid. My understanding of your desired symbol-enabled mail client is that incoming text emails will be translated into SVG symbols (not that I understand why they need to be SVG, rather than images), and that messages will be composed with symbols, then translated to text for sending.

That will be an extension to Thunderbird, and the person who writes that extension will absolutely certainly be capable of building Thunderbird to have an SVG-enabled build to write the extension, and in fact is likely to find it easier to distribute a custom build rather than an extension that can be installed in any SVG-enabled Thunderbird. Just shipping the default build of Thunderbird with SVG enabled isn't going to magically make that extension happen.

Comment 16

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Attachment: Fix v.1

But, you're in luck, getting an assist from a very unexpected direction, text rendering.

Bug 387969 added a backend for controlling whether text is rendered fast or pretty (with kerning and ligatures, if not with little hearts over the "i"s), using the already implemented text-rendering property from SVG because anyone building without SVG is "probably trying to do some kind of light embedded build"; bug 386759 enabled the pretty path for XUL and for HTML textboxes, by adding a "text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;" rule to toolkit/content/xul.css and layout/style/forms.css.

Bottom line for us is that we have four choices: live with three lines of error console spew about dropping rules because of the unknown text-rendering property at startup; get rid of the rules somehow (preprocessing, overriding, not sure what would both work and fly, since xul.css is preprocessed but forms.css is not); rewrite layout so that text-rendering doesn't rely on MOZ_SVG; enable SVG.

Given

[[[
roc: I'd prefer Thunderbird to just turn on SVG
roc: having SVG disabled there fragments our platform
]]]

I think options 2 and 3 are pretty well off the table, and I really don't want option 1, so here's option 4 :)

Comment 17

[jonathan chetwynd]

#15

Phil,

OperaMail and Mail.app nightlies render SVG in HTML mail through <img src=my.svg> there may be other methods, but this is one.

currently neither email application renders SVG attachments in compose mode.
though they both do in read mode. their developers are considering how this might be resolved.

also people who are pre-literate and adding svg attachments to their email, will need these svg symbols to be rendered in the directory view whilst searching, as well as the compose window. 

symbol communication is a complex issue, enabling SVG is a significant part of the puzzle. just one advantage over gifs being embedded metadata. see 'concept coding framework' for one developed rationale, another being the ease of changing colours, see 'svg red bus green bus'

your description is not what I was discussing, but another good approach.

filed a bug with gnome, and os x, but ms might take much longer. unless there is a workaround.

Comment 18

[Scott MacGregor]

Comment on attachment 282925 [details] [diff] [review]
Fix v.1

svg,here we come. i guess this was inevitable since we'd have to start building it anyway once we become a xul runner app.

Comment 19

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

mail/confvars.sh 1.5

It'll only sting until the next time I want to add something more ;)

Comment 20

[jonathan chetwynd]

Phil & Scott, 

amazing, but ~:"

what aspects of this bug are fixed?
eg how can I compose or read SVG in mail?

do download actions for attachments need to be set?
is <img src=my.svg> supported in read mode?

I'll try http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/ for 02/10/07 asap...

thanks

Comment 21

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

img src=svg is bug 276431.  The patch that was checked in simply enables SVG support in Thunderbird.  You should file follow-up bugs if you have specific use cases that aren't handled.

Comment 22

[jonathan chetwynd]

how is it possible to demonstrate that Thunderbird renders SVG?
What use case is handled?

I tried various approaches, but without success including:

<html><body><object type="image/svg+xml" data="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Thundery-shower.svg" width="150" height="150"><embed src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Thundery-shower.svg" width="150" height="150"><noembed>sorry this email client is not supported</noembed></embed></object><br>Thundery Showers</body></html>

Comment 23

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Toggle the pref mailnews.message_display.allow.plugins to true and restart Tbird, or use <iframe src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Thundery-shower.svg"></iframe>.

mscott: the sting isn't fading yet, is it?

Comment 24

[Scott MacGregor]

It never does Phil, it never does :)

Comment 25

[jonathan chetwynd]

ice-cream all round tx

preferences, advanced, config editor:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Images_in_messages_do_not_appear

bear in mind I'm trying to send SVG mail between opera, mail.app and thunderbird, as well as filing bugs....

congrats.