608220 - Can't delete attachments from multipart messages (multipart/alternative[ text/plain + multipart/mixed{ text/html + application/pdf + ... } ]. Unable to detach/delete application/pdf part)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Attachments, enhancement)

Description

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Firefox/3.6.12 GTB7.1 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.15) Gecko/20101027 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.0.10

Normally deleting an attachment works well. It leaves a hint that says:
"Deleted: <name of the original attachment>"
behind.

When I try to delete a large attachment, 3 MB or so, the program gives me the confirm box, then thinks for a while, and then the attachment isn't deleted.

Instead, the mailbox grows, since the message is duplicated internally, one live, the other one dead, but both still contain the attachment.

At times, removing the attachment fails on small ones, too. I will include a test message.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Attachment: Here's a test case. I manually removed part of the MIME encoded attachment. Still, it can't be deleted in TB.

Comment 2

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

on local mailboxes ? Does compacting rebuilding the index before doing the delete helps ?

Comment 3

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Mail structure.
  multipart/alternative
    part-1: text/plain
    part-2: multipart/mixed
      part-2-1: text/html 
      part-2-2: application/pdf
      part-2-3: text/html

When View/Messae Body As/HTML(Original/Simple).
  part-2 is used, as multipart/alternative mail, and as part-2 is HTML version.
  As part-2-2 is not rendered because of application/pdf, it's shown as if
  attachment at attachment pane, in order to provide user a way to save
  the not-shown-in-inline part to local file.
part-2-2 is not real attachment in multipart/mixed mail(multipart/alternative mail instead), so Tb doesn't execute detach/delete of part-2-2.

What is shown as if attachment with View/Messae Body As/Plain Text?

In Tb trunk, treatment of not-shown-in-inline part is already changed by bug 351224. See Bug 602718 for image/* in multipart/related example.
Is part-2-2 shown as if attachment at attachment pane by Tb trunk?
If no, confusing "as if attachment at attachment pane" which produced complaint of bug 351224 comment #0 won't occur, so complaint of "detech/delete is not executed" won't happen.

I think "detach/delete of part-2-2 in your case" is better provided as normal detach/delete of an ordinal attachment part. However, Tb unfortunately doesn't have capability of detach/delete of a part in nested multipart/* and nested message/rfc822.
To fulfil your requirement, enhancement discussed in Bug 602718 will be required. For "detach/delete of any part in multipart/*", further enhancments will probaly be required. Needless to say, sort out of "what is mail body, what is attachment, what is other than mail body/atachment" will be requird for such enhancements.

Comment 4

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

As WADA correctly pointed out, this has nothing to do with "large" attachments, but this problem happens in nested multipart messages.

This bug is therefore a duplicate of bug 351224.

Comment 5

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #4)
> This bug is therefore a duplicate of bug 351224.

I don't think your case is dup of that bug, even though both are for phenomenon with nested multipart of multipart/alternative mail.
  That bug  : for embed image/* for text/html in nested multipart/related part.
  Your case : for application/pdf in nested multipart/mixed part.
That bug is for logically/semantically not-attachment part for Tb.
Your case is for logically/semantically real attachment part for Tb.

When View/Message Body As/Plain Text, mail is sematically simple text/plain mail, because of multipart/alternative. So, other part(multipart/related part or multipart/mixed part) is ignored by Tb trunk.

When View//Message Body As/HTML, that bug is semantically multipart/related mail, but you case is seantically multipart/mixed mail.
Even if View/Display Attachments Inline=OFF, embed image/* for text/html in multipart/related should be shown as embed image in HTML in that bug.
Even if View/Display Attachments Inline=ON, application/pdf in multipart/mixed can not be shown in inline by Tb, then it's real attachment for Tb in your case.

So, my answer to bug opener's request.
For that bug  : Your request is rejected(WONTFIX), or Incorrect-Request.
For your case : It needs very high workload to fulfil your request,
                compared with small fruit obtained by change for a few users.
                CantFIX, or Do-Not-Want-To-FIX :-)

Comment 6

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

This bug was already worksforme in following build.
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:11.0) Gecko/20120312 Thunderbird/11.0
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120326 Thunderbird/14.0a1
PDF part in attached mail to this bug was shown as if atachment and was Detach'ed/Delete'ed as you want, although first/second text/html part was never shown as if attachment because it's text/html part under multipart/mixed part in multipart/ALTERNATIVE mail".

Perhaps a result of fixing of bug 674473 and some follow-up works in non-dsplayable/non-refered part handling.

Closing as WORKSFORME(poblem is already fixed by unknown patch)