678368 - Thunderbird doesn't accept attachment filename command line arguments correctly when it is already running.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[GreekSage]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.19) Gecko/20110707 Firefox/3.6.19 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build ID: 20110707195905

Steps to reproduce:

I run this command to compose a message :

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe -compose to='[e-mail]',subject='This is a test',attachment='C:\Thunder Bird\historical event.pdf,C:\EVENTS\abcdΠefgh\PHOTOS\9000_20071102_102112_Color_L_03.tif'

All things are OK if Thunderbird wasn't running at the time.

BUT if a Thunderbird process IS running, I get "weird" results...






Actual results:

if Thunderbird ISN'T running I get the 2 attachments correct:

C:\Thunder Bird\historical event.pdf
C:\EVENTS\abcdΠefgh\PHOTOS\9000_20071102_102112_Color_L_03.tif

if Thunderbird IS running and I execute the command I get an attachment that doesn't exists and is a merged version of the 2 attacments. Specificaly I get this:

C:\Thunder Bird\historical efgh\PHOTOS\9000_20071102_102112_Color_L_03.tif






Expected results:

I narrow it down to the capital greek letter pi that is included in the path of the 2nd attacment.

C:\EVENTS\abcdΠefgh\  (between abcd and efgh)

This is the letter:
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/3a0/index.htm

I don't know if this is happening with other letters to (greek or not).

The "weird" thing is that the attachments are messed up ONLY if thunderbird's process is already running.

I am developing a program and this BUG made me incorporate a routine to Kill thunderbird's process before execution. 
That is not a good thing. :-(

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

decent chance this is a duplicate

Comment 2

[GreekSage]

Can you provide a link with the similar bug?

Fat chance for this to be a dupe since it's very specific and hard to find.

What is with the greek letter "pi"?
It triggers some internal code or it's something like an escape character?

Comment 3

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

More likely, there is some bad charset conversion going on somewhere. Like in the command line handler:

#ifdef XP_WIN
  CopyUTF8toUTF16(nsDependentCString(arg), warg);
#else
  NS_CopyNativeToUnicode(nsDependentCString(arg), warg);
#endif

Comment 4

[GreekSage]

This bug is still present in 6.01 version that I just installed.
I hope someone fix it some day.
I hate the idea that I have a routine in my program that checks if thunderbird is running and kill its process if it does.

Comment 5

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to GreekSage from comment #4)
> This bug is still present in 6.01 version that I just installed.
> I hope someone fix it some day.

want to give it a try ?

Comment 6

[GreekSage]

Still present in 7.01


>>want to give it a try ?

Hi Ludovic.
How can I do that?
Can you point me to the right direction?

Comment 7

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to GreekSage from comment #6)
> Still present in 7.01
> 
> 
> >>want to give it a try ?
> 
> Hi Ludovic.
> How can I do that?
> Can you point me to the right direction?

Of course. And sorry for the late reply - I'm lagging a bit behind in bugmail.
Here is a list of steps you need to follow :

1) build thunderbird
2) Find how we handle command line
3) Debug the issue.
4) fix it.
5) Create a patch
6) Attach the patch to this bug 
7) ask for review
8) address review comments if any
9) Add the chekin-needed keyword 

1 is documented at https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Build_Documentation and https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Simple_Thunderbird_build

2 is probably in https://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/base/src/nsMailNewsCommandLineHandler.js but I'm not too sure.

5 is documented at https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Creating_a_patch and http://blog.bonardo.net/2010/06/22/so-youre-about-to-use-checkin-needed

For steps after 5 I'll probably help by following the bug. For steps 3 and 4 you might want to ask some help on #maildev on irc.mozilla.org or on news://mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird .

You can also ask more questions here.

Comment 8

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to GreekSage from comment #4)
> I hate the idea that I have a routine in my program that checks if
> thunderbird is running and kill its process if it does.

Tb accepts two formats in "attachment=".
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments_%28Thunderbird%29
> "attachment' : specify the directory and the name of an attachment
>    the value should be a file:// url, properly encoded
>    with tb3+, you can alternatively use the absolute file name (unencoded) 
Does primary "file: url" work as expected?
  (a) abcdΠefgh in utf-8, and escaped
  (b) abcdΠefgh in system charset(windows-125x, iso-8859-x, ...), and escaped
To see file: url format used by Mozilla, open file named abcdΠefgh.TXT by Firefox, or create file link in html mail using Tb, please.

Comment 9

[John David Galt]

Just before Firefox 3.0, some irresponsible person made a half-baked change to command-line processing that resulted in all command line arguments being disabled when running on Windows.  I complained about it at the time in bug 355889 comment 12, and was told to shut up or else (see later comments in that bug).

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Indeed with TB down it works. Don't know if it's a dupe of a core bug.
Does it match to one of these??: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?type1-0-0=substring;list_id=3512659;field0-0-0=short_desc;bug_severity=blocker;bug_severity=critical;bug_severity=major;bug_severity=normal;bug_severity=minor;type0-0-1=substring;field0-0-1=short_desc;type1-0-1=allwordssubstr;resolution=---;classification=Client%20Software;classification=Components;query_format=advanced;value0-0-1=command%20line;type0-0-0=anywordssubstr;value0-0-0=commandline;field1-0-0=short_desc;product=Core;product=Firefox;product=MailNews%20Core;product=Thunderbird;product=Toolkit;field1-0-1=short_desc

I'm not sure bug 355889 is related. Certainly not related if this bug is a not a regression - which has not be stipulated nor determined.

GreekSage's address is failing

Comment 11

[Benjamin Flanagin]

Another old and probably invalid bug. Not that it wasn't valid at the time.

If no one objects I'll be closing this on the 20th of May

Comment 12

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Before closing such a bug, it would be helpful to test it. Given the paths mentioned in comment #0, I tried this on Windows with no problem:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird 60\thunderbird.exe" -compose to='[e-mail]',subject='This is a test',attachment='d:\Desktop\BVG-Preise-2016.pdf,d:\Desktop\ätreeherder.txt'

Note the Umlaut ä which is on the local ANSI codepage windows-1252 for my system. It even works with:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird 60\thunderbird.exe" -compose to='[e-mail]',subject='This is a test',attachment='d:\Desktop\BVG-Preise-2016.pdf,d:\Desktop\Πtreeherder.txt'

Note the "Π".

It even works with

D:\Desktop>"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird 60\thunderbird.exe" -compose to='[e-mail]',subject='This is a test',attachment='d:\Desktop\BVG-Preise-2016.pdf,d:\Desktop\テtreeherder.txt'

and the Japanese character is most certainly not on the local ANSI codepage.

So whatever didn't work in 2011 works now.