898407 - Quicktime Plugin does not recognize WAV files attached in emails

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[TT]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 SeaMonkey/2.19 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130630004618

Steps to reproduce:

Received a WAV file as an attachment in an email.  When I double-click on it, Seamonkey opens it in the browser, but it cannot be played.  I get a QuickTime error message about an unsupported format.

If I download the WAV file and drag/drop it to a browser window, then it plays fine.



Expected results:

Here is the relevant part of the email, with some headers:

Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
	boundary="_002_201307261315r6QDFOi6021491pbx4press8com_"
MIME-Version: 1.0

--_002_201307261315r6QDFOi6021491pbx4press8com_
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

QXR0YWNoZWQgaXMgYSAwOjE1IGxvbmcgdm9pY2VtYWlsIGZyb20gVEVYQU4gRVlFIENBUkUsIDUx
MjMyNzcwMDAgaW4gbWFpbGJveCA1OTg1Lg==

--_002_201307261315r6QDFOi6021491pbx4press8com_
Content-Type: audio/x-wav; name="msg0000.wav"
Content-Description: msg0000.wav
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="msg0000.wav"; size=245868;
	creation-date="Fri, 26 Jul 2013 13:15:27 GMT";
	modification-date="Fri, 26 Jul 2013 13:15:27 GMT"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

UklGRiTAAwBXQVZFZm10IBAAAAABAAEAQB8AAIA+AAACABAAZGF0YQDAAwD4//j/+P/4/wAAAAAA
AAgA+P8AAPj/AAAAAAAACAAIAPj/AAAAAPj/+P8IAAgAAAAIAAAAAAD4/wAACAAIAAgA+P8AAAAA
+P8IAAAAAAD4/wAA+P8AAAgAAAD4//j/+P8IAAAAAAAIAPj/+P8IAAgACAAAAAgA+P/4/wAAAAAA

Comment 1

[TT]

Update: the error message only appears sometimes when I first open the file.  Usually, I just get a blank browser window and nothing happens.  Either way, I am unable to play an WAV file embedded as an email attachment.

Comment 2

[rsx11m]

A similar issue was reported for the Windows Media Player plugin in bug 363155, but this may be different as it's on Mac OSX rather than Windows (but equally related to bug 58554).

> I get a QuickTime error message about an unsupported format.

Is that message coming from the QuickTime plugin or actually from SeaMonkey? Note that the Windows counterpart is talking about an unsupported *protocol* when trying to open a mailbox: URI, so this may be a similar issue of the QuickTime plugin not being able to interpret and access the mailbox content directly.

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

If you go into Tools > Add-ons Manager and click "Disable" for the QuickTime plugin, then try again, does the attachment now open correctly in a stand-alone QuickTime window, i.e., not running in the browser itself?

Comment 4

[TT]

Yes, it's an error from the QuickTime plugin.  After disabling the plugin, I'm now prompted to open the QuickTime player to play the WAV file, which works.  But now I can't seem any embedded QT content.  This page, for example,

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/format/quicktime/streaming/example.html

is broken for me.

Comment 5

[rsx11m]

Makes sense, so this looks very similar to bug 363155 and quite likely is a duplicate, but I'll leave this open for a Mac user to decide how to proceed.

Unfortunately, I don't think there is any other workaround to recommend. The underlying issue is that plugins are handed over a location for the attachment which is internal to SeaMonkey, thus doesn't can be accessed by the plugin.

Comment 6

[TT]

Are plugins required to understand all URLs?  Are you saying that the QuickTime plugin just does not understand the URL for the email attachment?

This bug does look a lot like bug 363155, but since that bug hasn't had any traction in five years, I don't know what the point is.  Maybe the real fix is to replace the quicktime plugin with something that actually works.

Comment 7

[rsx11m]

The problem is that when a plugin is available, the content is treated as being handled internal. Thus, SeaMonkey expects the plugin to handle such internal references, though I don't think that the plugin specs require a plugin to understand those (any apparently haven't implemented them as they are not in a standard, so that would be an acceptable point of view).

The solution is to export such attachments like "regular" attachments and store them somewhere in a temporary location, than pass a standardized file: URI to the processing plugin. This should solve both the issues here and in bug 363155, however indeed didn't get much attention in the past...

Comment 8

[TT]

So it seems to me that the real problem here is that Seamonkey expects all plugins to support all URLs, but that's unrealistic, and there's no way to tell Seamonkey that some plugins don't support some URLs.  That's what's broken.

Comment 9

[rsx11m]

Yeah, that's my impression, but maybe Stefan can have a look at this what's actually passed to the QuickTime plugin and if it matches the WMP scenario.

Comment 10

[ap2]

This doesn't solve the problem per se, but you can get SeaMonkey to automatically open the WAV attachment in the Quicktime Player application by going to SeaMonkey -> Preferences -> Browser -> Helper Applications and scrolling down to WAVE Audio File and changing the action from "Use QuickTime Plugin X.y" to "Use QuickTime Player". This makes listening to e-mailed wav attachments sent by my voicemail much more tolerable than having to save them to disk and open then manually with Quicktime Player.

Best,
Baxter

Comment 11

[Rainer Bielefeld]

@reporter:
Still a problem for you?

Comment 12

[TT]

Yes, it's a still a problem.  Attached MP3 files can be played in the browser, but attached WAV files are played in an external Quicktime player.

Granted, this doesn't bother me any more, but the embedded Quicktime player can play WAV files, it's just the Seamonkey doesn't believe it.

Comment 13

[Rainer Bielefeld]

REPRODUCIBLE (more or less?) with  en-US (German language pack) SeaMonkey 2.38  (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:41.0)  Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0 Build 20150923195647  (Classic Theme) on German WIN7 64bit and Quicktime Plugin 7.7.8.

Steps how to reproduce:
1. Create an e-mail (plain text) → attach "posthorn_mix.wav" → send to yourself
2. Open received e-mail
3. Double click attachment
   » Browser TAB will open for <Profilefolder\maillaccountfolder\Inbox?number=223108512&part=1.2&filename=01_[HTTP_1_0 200 OK] http___dradio-mp3_t-bn_de_dlf live.wav>
   bug: Only tranparent "Quicktime"-Logo with additional white question mark will
        be shown, no sound played

a) So it looks as if something is wrong with handling of attachment when it
   becomes "transported" to Browser?
   What is more or less the same as supposed in comment 5

BUT

10. Save "posthorn_mix.wav" on HD
11. From Browser file menu 'Open → Open file ... → browse for "posthorn_mix.wav"
    » Browser TAB will open for file, player shown, osund played.

Comment 14

[Rainer Bielefeld]

All OS due to comment 13

Comment 15

[Rainer Bielefeld]

Attachment: sample WAV

See Comment 13 how to use

Comment 16

[Rainer Bielefeld]

@Reporter:
did that work for you before SeaMonkey/2.19

Comment 17

[TT]

I don't remember if I tried this before 2.19.

Comment 18

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

NPAPI plugins are no longer supported.