575549 - ENH: Add "Save as PDF" or "Export as PDF" to message context options

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Scott Marshall]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-AU; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.4) Gecko/20100608 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1

OpenOffice.org has a useful "File > Export as PDF" option, which would also be very useful in Thunderbird, as there are times when it would be preferable to store (or archive) an email as PDF.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Select a message and try so "Save as", and the only formats are HTML, Text or eml.
2. PDF is not available as a format.

Actual Results:  
Cannot save or otherwise export a message (or messages) as a PDF.

Expected Results:  
PDF should be an available "Export" or "Save as" format, at least for email messages, with the generated PDF formatted as it would be rendered if viewed or printed.

Certain PDF fields such as "Title"/"Subject" should map to equivalent mail header values, thus providing better document metadata.
The PDF "Author" field should probably contain the "sender" or "from" name/address, so that received mails being exported are correctly attributed, as would "sent" mails being exported.

Mail headers could possibly be stored in the PDF "Keyword" area.

The "PDF Producer" metadata should contain the Thunderbird build details.

If the mail is "signed" via some form of PKI certificate (eg GPG, PKCS#12), if possible the generated PDF should be equivalently signed if supported by the PDF specification.

Comment 1

[Scott Marshall]

Alternatively, it may be possible to extend an add-on such as ImportExportTools (MboxImport enhanced) [https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html] to cater for this facility.

Comment 2

[Scott Marshall]

If multiple messages are selected when attempting to "Export as" or "Save as" PDF, then the user should be provided with the option to either generate one PDF per message or one PDF containing the selected messages in chronological or thread order (with appropriate TOC or outline PDF settings).

Comment 3

[Scott Marshall]

This new feature could be further enhanced by enabling its use from the command line, thus permitting automated (batch) processing of EML emails to PDFs.

From what I've discovered in my research is that NONE of the Linux email clients offer any form of PDF export, or effective automated archival of emails.
(Yes, Thunderbird has an "Archive" function, but the emails are still "in" Thunderbird)

There are definitely plenty of commercial products in the Window$ world, but I can find nothing for non-Windows platforms.
Given the importance given by the corporate & government worlds to effective mail archiving, this feature would really differentiate Thunderbird from EVERY other mail client I've seen.

Being able to execute
  "thunderbird -exportaspdf /path/to/eml_file"; or
  "thunderbird -exportaspdf /path/to/mail_dir -outdir /path/to/PDF_dir" 
would be super-useful.