527389 - Attachment icons either missing or useless (Linux)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Build Config, defect)

Description

[Eric Moore]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 and 3.0 beta 4

The Mozilla build of Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 does not display icons for attachments when reading a message under Ubuntu 9.04. All it displays is a paper clip and the file name. Under Windows it also displays an icon for the attachment based on the utility it used to open it.

The Mozilla build of Shredder beta 4 under Ubuntu 9.04 displays an icon for the attachment but its useless. Neither its shape, contents or color seem related to any icons associated with the file type. It also does not mimic the reduced view of the image you see for the same attachment (when its saved to disk) using the file browser.

I used the same profile for both operating systems and versions of Thunderbird. I looked at them with mailnews.attachments.display.largeView 
set to both true and false to see whether the icon size made any difference. It didn't.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/missing-attachment-icons-in-thunderbird-and-seamonkey-mail-765243/ claims that if you build Thunderbird 2.x with ac_add_options --enable-gnomevfs and ac_add_options --enable-gnomeui in the mozconfig file it will display icons for the attachment. 


Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
An icon that you can use to easily recognize what type of file the attachment is. I would normally expect the icon to reflect the file type (to mimic what I'm used to under Windows) but displaying the same icon that you see in the file browser for a saved copy of that attachment would have been reasonable.

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Linux builders , are  the assumption about the ac_add_options true ?

Comment 2

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

The options are already enabled by default as long as all external libraries are present at build time.
When I check a 3.0pre build I see icons for attachments and they are also different per file type/extension. I'm not sure if they are correct though because I'm not sure where they come from.

Comment 3

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: this is what I see on my machine

pdf-files have the pdf icon and svg's have the image-x-generic icon.

Comment 4

[Björn]

(In reply to comment #2)
> The options are already enabled by default as long as all external libraries
> are present at build time.
> When I check a 3.0pre build I see icons for attachments and they are also
> different per file type/extension. I'm not sure if they are correct though
> because I'm not sure where they come from.

Official build of TB 2.0.0.23 from Mozilla does not include moz-icon function. In order to get the icons you must rebuild from source adding ac_add_options --enable-gnomevfs and ac_add_options --enable-gnomeui in the mozconfig file. The automated check for these librarys does not work in 2.0.0.23.

Comment 5

[Björn]

Further information. Mozilla preferred way of installing the build of TB 2.0.0.23 on Linux brakes moz-icon functionality, leaving you without icons again! The reason is that you, in order to make the installer, need to add ac_add_options --enable-static --disable-shared to mozconfig file. This somehow turns off gnome-vfs. 

I did manage to install a shared build anyway by jumping to objdir and run "make install DESTDIR=/tmp/mozilla". Then I jumped into /tmp/mozilla and made a package/tarball with Slackwares makepkg tool. Whats the reason you can't make a package when making a shared build (i.e. the Mozilla way of making a package)?

Although I have not tested my install that much it seems to work fine and the icons are present. 

I would have to turn off update wouldn't I. Otherwise I will loose the icons on the next update. Unless you decide to fix it permanently.

Comment 6

[Vincent (caméléon)]

Attachment: Printscreen in Thunderbird 3.1.4 on Linux with missing icons

You can see that jpg and doc attachment don't have any icon whereas pdf and ods attachment have one.
Is it related to the same problem (I think so but I am not sure...)?

Comment 7

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Created attachment 477527 [details]
> Printscreen in Thunderbird 3.1.4 on Linux with missing icons
> 
> You can see that jpg and doc attachment don't have any icon whereas pdf and ods
> attachment have one.
> Is it related to the same problem (I think so but I am not sure...)?

Odd. It seems like I can duplicate this behaviour using the default Ubuntu theme (Ambiance), but not Clearlooks (the default GNOME theme).

Comment 8

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Seems like this comes down to the icon theme (Humanity or gnome-icon-theme). This seems to work correctly on trunk (but not on 3.1.4, current from Ubuntu). I'm not sure how it could come down to the .mozconfig file or not, but here is mine: http://pastebin.mozilla.org/798651

Comment 9

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

Most likely only depending on the icon theme. For me TB is showing the same icon for attachments in TB 3.1.4 as I see in Firefox 3.6.x when I use a URI like that:
moz-icon://uetzelgruetzel.pdf?size=16&contentType=image/png
Choose whatever you like as contentType and compare FF's and TB's output.

Comment 10

[Björn]

But it must depend on how mozilla handles the icons and not the theme it self. I mean you do have icons for the mentioned files in your file manager don't you. At least that's what I can see.

Comment 11

[Vincent (caméléon)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Seems like this comes down to the icon theme (Humanity or gnome-icon-theme).
You are right, I also see the icons with default Gnome theme. So should it be reported to Ubuntu theme team (on launchpad for instance)?

Comment 12

[Björn]

(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > Seems like this comes down to the icon theme (Humanity or gnome-icon-theme).
> You are right, I also see the icons with default Gnome theme. So should it be
> reported to Ubuntu theme team (on launchpad for instance)?

No, that is my point. The filemanager manage to pickup substitute icons but mozilla does not. So I believe the bug is somewhere in the moz-icon model.

Comment 13

[Vincent (caméléon)]

So after all that comments which make me understand that it is a Mozilla issue,  can anyone confirm this bug?

Comment 14

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

Just because a filemanager shows icons and Firefox doesn't makes it a Mozilla bug.
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/modules/libpr0n/decoders/icon/gtk/nsIconChannel.cpp
This module seems to do the work. I'm not absolutely familiar with the Gnome API for icons though.
I really think that Gnome is not returning any icon on your systems.
Anyone up for writing a small test application using the concept of above source?

Comment 15

[Wolfgang Rosenauer [:wolfiR]]

Attachment: testapp

This is a quite simple test app which does a similar thing as Mozilla.
Compile it like this:
gcc -g -o gnome-icon gnome-icon.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs libgnomeui-2.0`

Example output from my system:
wolfi@Hygiea:~/build/examples> ./gnome-icon application/pdf
Gnome icon name: gnome-mime-application-pdf
Gtk icon filename: /usr/share/icons/Tango/16x16/mimetypes/gnome-mime-application-pdf.png

You need to check for the mime types used for the attachments. (Can be seen in the mail source)

Comment 16

[Vincent (caméléon)]

Sorry Wolfgang, but I do not understand if I am suppose to do some test and how I could help...

Comment 17

[Björn]

(In reply to comment #15)
> Created attachment 478876 [details]
> testapp
> 
> This is a quite simple test app which does a similar thing as Mozilla.
> Compile it like this:
> gcc -g -o gnome-icon gnome-icon.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs libgnomeui-2.0`
> 
> Example output from my system:
> wolfi@Hygiea:~/build/examples> ./gnome-icon application/pdf
> Gnome icon name: gnome-mime-application-pdf
> Gtk icon filename:
> /usr/share/icons/Tango/16x16/mimetypes/gnome-mime-application-pdf.png
> 
> You need to check for the mime types used for the attachments. (Can be seen in
> the mail source)

Well,

your test app worked allright.

m95vebj@Mack:~$ ./gnome-icon application/pdf
Gnome icon name: gnome-mime-application-pdf
Gtk icon filename: /usr/share/icons/Tango/16x16/mimetypes/gnome-mime-application-pdf.png
m95vebj@Mack:~$ 

But, TB doesn't show any attachment icons at all. System is a Slackware 13.1 with gnome stuff added.

Comment 18

[Björn]

Attachment: Test case attachment pane

Icon seams to change i.e. if you save a mail with attachment and later open it the icon change and does no longer reflect the correct file type.

Comment 19

[Björn]

(In reply to comment #18)
> Created attachment 479927 [details]
> Test case attachment pane
> 
> Icon seams to change i.e. if you save a mail with attachment and later open it
> the icon change and does no longer reflect the correct file type.

Some clarifications. 
As you allready have seen I got the icons in place by recompiling TB from Slackware source. I added --enable-gnomeui and --enable-gnomevfs. I have not testested if those arguments are necessary. TB distributed with the 32 bit Slackware is the official Mozilla build (allthough repackaged). 
TB distributed with 64 bit Slackware is compiled from source as there are no official 64 bits Mozilla releases. Most likely that machine does not have gnome-vfs and gnomeui. Mine is a 64 bit system.

Now to my last comment. If you look at the attachment to comment #18. The first 3 attachments in the listview was added when the mail was created. If you then forward or reopen a draft mail the icons change to some stock file icon. Both xls attachments should look like the last one which was added when the mail was reopened.

Comment 20

[Jonathan Protzenko [:protz]]

This is part of a larger batch of bugs regarding the moz-icon protocol. This "feature" of Gecko tries to guess the right icon either from the file extension or from the mime type. I guess in your case some of this information becomes available after you save the message which explains why the icon changes.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=moz-icon

This is probably a duplicate of something in the search above.

Comment 21

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

We've got new attachment UI.  So, does this issue still existin version 6 or nwer?

Comment 22

[Vincent (caméléon)]

(In reply to comment #21)
> We've got new attachment UI.  So, does this issue still existin version 6 or
> nwer?

I do not see the problem anymore with TB6beta on Ubuntu 11.04.

Comment 23

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Eric (reporter), is this still a problem with TB24?

Comment 24

[Eric Moore]

When I replaced my PC a year ago I didn't re-install Ubuntu. I was thinking of installing Linux Mint (dual boot with Windows 7). Give me a couple of days to do that and retest.

Comment 25

[Vincent (caméléon)]

I also do not see this issue since years. I think we can close the bug.

Comment 26

[Björn]

Attachment: showcaseof different icons for the same file type

Well, both yes and no. Icons show up if you have a GTK theme manager running (e.g. xfsettingsd). However the icons are different in the attachment pane underneath the message pane (right side of picture) and if you e.g. forward the mail, in the composers attachment pane (left side in picture). The latter fails to pick the right icon.

Comment 27

[Eric Moore]

Sorry about the delay re-testing. I downloaded 24.2.0 from the Mozilla web site and retested with Linux Mint Olivia/Cinnamon with .gif, .jpg, .png, .pdf, .doc, .docx, .html and text attachments. The icons were correct both in saved messages and while composing or forwarding a message with an attachment.   

I'm going to close this bug report. I suggest Bjorn open a new one if there is a problem with non-GTK+ based desktops.