460285 - Expose ability to paste pngs from clipboard in compose window

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[David :Bienvenu]

spun off from bug 444800 which Kathy kindly alerted me to. It may turn out we don't have to do anything, or bug 456086 will handle it for us. But as I understand it, if we do nothing, we will continue to paste images as jpeg on windows, in the compose window, when we could be pasting as png. I don't know if we want an option in the prefs ui, or want to switch to png by default, or give the user an option at paste time, but I'm just filing this so we can track the issue.

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

David, the editor patch in bug 384116 should paste in PNG also on Windows if
the widgets (bug 444800) provide it in that format. In turn, a new preference "clipboard.paste_image_type" allows to specify the order of flavors to be checked on the clipboard (defaulting to PNG, JPEG, GIF) for pasting into the editor. This already works on other platforms (where supported, e.g., Linux).

The new bug 456086 is only about making the quality configurable with the "clipboard.paste_image_quality" preference, as supported by the clipboard mechanism of the respective platform, where there was some doubt if this is actually needed (therefore the careful phrasing of the bug's subject).

Then there is also Thunderbird bug 344248, which would be resolved by the sum
of the other bugs, except for the question of providing some user interface
for the preferences, or to determine at pasting time the flavor to paste in
(some type of "Paste As" functionality would certainly be nice to have...).
Thus, this bug here may actually be a covered by bug 344248 already.

Comment 2

[rsx11m]

Just grabbed tinderbox build 20081020085804 for Win32 and tested pasting an image from MS Paint into an HTML message, which nicely pasted in PNG format with the default of "1" for "clipboard.paste_image_type", and in JPEG with a value of "0". Thus, the pasting in both PNG and JPEG works in Thunderbird for Windows as well then without any further action necessary.

We can keep this open for any UI elements David may have in mind, and make the other bug 344248 a meta bug, or close this here and handle anything specific over there, whatever seems to be the better approach.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I'd think adding UI to choose paste format is a bit too much. The very few people who would care about the format are quite able to set it in config editor, or someone can create an extension for it.

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

Yeah, I don't really have any UI in mind, or any strong opinions about this.  But Magnus is right, I think most users don't care, and the config editor is fine for those who care. I think closing this is fine, as wontfix.

Comment 5

[rsx11m]

Agreed, a drop-box for that rather complex preference would fit into the Advanced pref pane at best, even then I'm having trouble to come up with a wording that would intuitively express specifying an order of image formats...

Comment 6

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Agreed that we don't want a "Paste as..." kind of UI for this, those are hard for people to find and and require lots of manual delete and re-paste for mistakes.

However as an idea for anyone who wanted to pick this up.  Something like a utility box that appeared on paste and then went away afterward might be a good experiment for an extension to try implementing.

Here's an example, not exactly what I would do but I can't really spend more than 30 mins working on this design.
http://clarkbw.net/designs/paste-as-image/

You could move the the utility box somewhere else, as well as possibly offer delete options.  I'm sure others can pile up ideas.