731945 - Command line -file option should open file even if the extension isn't .eml

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Ingo Krabbe]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/535.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/17.0.963.26 Safari/535.11

Steps to reproduce:

Calling `thunderbird -mail URL' does not work with local files, where URL is one of:
  - FILENAME -- just the filename of the file in the current working directory (most  
                     appreciated mode of operation!)
  - $HOME/FILENAME -- full path to file
  - FILE:///$HOME/FILENAME -- correct FILE: URL (not usefull but often the last resort)

A cross check using thunderbird as an interactive GUI APP, which I generally don't like, just starting `thunderbird' click to File->Open with that FILENAME used above, works as expected.


Actual results:

See that mess:

 ~ $ thunderbird -mail post
enigmail.js: Registered components
Unrecognized URL: post
 ~ $ thunderbird -mail $HOME/post
enigmail.js: Registered components
Unrecognized URL: /home/ingo/post
 ~ $ thunderbird -mail file://$HOME/post
enigmail.js: Registered components
Unrecognized URL: file:///home/ingo/post
 ~ $ thunderbird -mail file://$HOME/post
enigmail.js: Registered components
Unrecognized URL: file:///home/ingo/post
 ~ $ thunderbird -mail file:$HOME/post
enigmail.js: Registered components
Unrecognized URL: file:/home/ingo/post

I can't imagine another form of URL, possibly you?


Expected results:

It should just have openend me the file as in interactively choosing File->Open->Saved Message, select Homedir, choose ALL Files filter, search the file, tag it and click open.

Actually, this chain of clicks is pure pain for a command line user as I am. I can't even imagine persons who like to use such interfaces, but I know many of you do each day.

BTW.: The File "post" is no EML, or whatever overcooked format, but just a simple, old-style, plain mbox file and I use thunderbird just to test how the mails I compose with some other tool (actually I use ed - The UNIX Editor).

Comment 1

[Hashem Masoud]

(In reply to Ingo Krabbe from comment #0)
Confirmed. This doesn't work. What is more, there is inconsistency between info here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Command_Line_Options and the Thunderbird command-line help (invoked by thunderbird --help) for this option.

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20120216 Thunderbird/10.0.2
Application Build ID: 20120216022139

Comment 2

[Ingo Krabbe]

(In reply to Hashem Masoud from comment #1)
> Confirmed. This doesn't work. What is more, there is inconsistency between
> info here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Command_Line_Options and the
> Thunderbird command-line help (invoked by thunderbird --help) for this
> option.

This is an interesting reply, as I assume, the -mail <URL> option should open the composer with a mailto:URL then.

I would strongly recommend to change -mail <URL> into -compose <MAILTO-URL> in documentation and remove -mail <URL> from the docuemntation.

Actually -file FILENAME does what I want, but please remove the filename filter.

I saved a mail from my favourite mail client, which is mutt, into a ~/bugzilla-test file.

Actually opening

  thunderbird -file ~/bugzilla-test

does nothing!
But 

  mv ~/bugzilla-test ~/bugzilla-test.eml
  thunderbird -file ~/bugzilla-test.eml

does actually work, though the file is an mbox and no eml file, whatever the latter might be.

So could you please just try to open the file and fail with a fatal message when absolutely not able to.

Again: This works: thunderbird -file ~/file.eml, where ~/file.eml is an mbox file.

regards,
ingo

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yes, we require the file to be .eml
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mail/components/nsMailDefaultHandler.js#382

Comment 4

[Ingo Krabbe]

(In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #3)
> Yes, we require the file to be .eml
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mail/components/
> nsMailDefaultHandler.js#382

What has the filename extension to do with the type of file you require?
Actually I use mbox files, as any mail apps did 20 years ago.

Comment 5

[Ingo Krabbe]

(In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #3)
> Yes, we require the file to be .eml
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mail/components/nsMailDefaultHandler.js#382

Actually, reading the link you sent me, I see, that what you do is even worse!
I strongly recommend, that you leave the file-type detection to the user, and split the file-type handling by differnet options -mail, -compose, -vcard

What you are doing there is error prone and if that wasn't in a javascript sandbox anyway, this type of
user input handling is of course the best way to introduce fatal bugs into a software.

For Example: What happens if I simply rename my zip file to vcf and open it with the vcard reader.
Is the content checked by the Services module or does it just open the binary content and leaves a core afterwards? (just an example)

(not that I'm really interested in what you do to your source code and your brains, as I just use
your software to test what any common **** software will do with my mails).

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

(In reply to Ingo Krabbe from comment #4)
> (In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #3)
> > Yes, we require the file to be .eml
> > http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mail/components/
> > nsMailDefaultHandler.js#382
> 
> What has the filename extension to do with the type of file you require?
> Actually I use mbox files, as any mail apps did 20 years ago.

I think that is exactly why it's only .eml files supported. An .eml file isn't strictly an mbox file, though of course they are similar, and it may happen to work.

Comment 7

[Ingo Krabbe]

(In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #6)
> (In reply to Ingo Krabbe from comment #4)
> > (In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #3)
> > > Yes, we require the file to be .eml
> > > http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mail/components/
> > > nsMailDefaultHandler.js#382
> > 
> > What has the filename extension to do with the type of file you require?
> > Actually I use mbox files, as any mail apps did 20 years ago.
> 
> I think that is exactly why it's only .eml files supported. An .eml file
> isn't strictly an mbox file, though of course they are similar, and it may
> happen to work.

So you really want to tell me, that making me renaming my mailbox files into .eml names is a user friendly use case?

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Of course not, i'm just telling you the reasons it (probably) was designed that way. I think i'd be fine with not checking the extension myself...

Comment 9

[Alexey Losev]

Another reason to fix that:
I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 where the application to open a file is determined by MIME type rather than by file extension.
Secondly, I'm using recoll program to full-text search through my documents and emails. Once a email is found I'm trying to open it - recoll saves the email to a temporary file and runs system open - via thunderbird.
This way I'm unable to work  - I can't give .eml extention to be able to open the file.

Comment 10

[Hiroyuki Ikezoe (:hiro)]

Changing bug summary.

-mail option is not for local file, it is for a message in Thunderbird like this:

$ thunderbird -mail imap-message://[e-mail]/INBOX#1

As Alexey said, determining by MIME type is reasonable to me.