439524 - Primitive functionality to download binary attachment fails

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Frank Hofmann]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080404 Firefox/2.0.0.14
Build Identifier: Version 2.0.0.14 (20080421)

It's unbelievable -- it's told, that there are millions of users, everybody feels great, the programmer clap each others shoulder and make appointments for the beach or more probably for the bar, there are even Mozilla T-shirts sold -- but the most essential, primitive, basic function: downloading a piece of information by means of the central protocol in that domain area (IMAP) does not work !!! Simply try to open a scanned file (TIFF) attached to an email.  

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.open TIFF attachment
2 [review].
3.
Actual Results:  
error message or simply black page or part of the page

Expected Results:  
display correct image like delivered by Microsoft Outlook an others.

Comment 1

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> It's unbelievable -- it's told, that there are millions of users, everybody
> feels great, the programmer clap each others shoulder and make appointments for
> the beach or more probably for the bar, there are even Mozilla T-shirts sold --
> but the most essential, primitive, basic function: downloading a piece of
> information by means of the central protocol in that domain area (IMAP) does
> not work !!! Simply try to open a scanned file (TIFF) attached to an email.  

Guess what? It works for me (on version 2.0 on Linux). I sent myself the first TIFF image I could find (http://homepage.mac.com/sc42koi/tiffcentral/samplefiles/Olympics8.tif), sent it to my IMAP account using a webmail account, and it opened up a "Open with external program" dialog, which displayed the image perfectly.

> error message or simply black page or part of the page

Which error message? Where's the black page or part of page?

Do you have any extensions or plugins running?

How is the attachment delivered--inline or attached? Better yet, could you attach the message?

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

and what imap server are you using?

Comment 3

[Frank Hofmann]

Attachment: Microsoft Office Document Imaging page overview showing up from outlook client

Comment 4

[Frank Hofmann]

Attachment: Microsoft Office Document Imaging opening using thunderbird client

IMAP server is Microsoft Exchange. Outlooks delivers image as expected, Thunderbird doesn't.

remark: sometimes the "black area" starts in the middle of a page;
maybe somethng is wrong in decoding multi-part mime attachment when attachment is binary (boundaries / stream terminators).

another remark: don't get on my nerves with this "everything works in my environment" attitude. I am trying to contribute and am investing my time to give you hints about the software that you are responsible for, or at least you decided to work on it. And for the Thunderbird mail client I assume that there is a multi-platform test- and release effort. And neither SBS/Exchange mail server nor standard multi-page TIFF files from a multi functional BROTHER printer/scanner are are unusual ingredients in a usage scenario.

Comment 5

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> another remark: don't get on my nerves with this "everything works in my
> environment" attitude.

With all due respect, you were the person who initiated the attitude by complaining about this "primitive" feature not working right; I was pointing out that, given the information you provided, I could not reproduce the error. Obviously, we need more information, and your complaint is not wholly warranted.

> I am trying to contribute and am investing my time to
> give you hints about the software that you are responsible for, or at least you
> decided to work on it.

You still have not answered basic questions that would help us to find the problem:

What error message do you see?
Do you have any extensions or plugins installed?
How is the actual, textual source of the message organized? If it's not private information, could you post the Ctrl-U of the message?

> And for the Thunderbird mail client I assume that there
> is a multi-platform test- and release effort. And neither SBS/Exchange mail
> server nor standard multi-page TIFF files from a multi functional BROTHER
> printer/scanner are are unusual ingredients in a usage scenario. 

True, but a bug which more or less states "There is a problem!" is not fixable, since there is no context, and most problems in a mature codebase are due to a confluence of several factors. In this case, the problem might lie anywhere from graphics and widget code to MIME parsing code to IMAP download code to bugs in IMAP servers or original MUAs. In order to even have a hope of fixing this bug, we would need much more information to merely locate the weak point in the chain.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

=> incomplete based on prior comments
if more details emerge, please post them and reopen the bug.
before doing so, at this stage you would want to base your problem report on using version 3 which will be available soon.

FWIW ...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Bug_writing_guidelines