thunderbird + reply-to-list ... here it comes

Sunday, August 13. 2006

Posted by asac (Alexander Sack) in Debian OS, Debian Thunderbird at 16:24 | Comments (17) | Trackbacks (0)

Yesterday, I uploaded a first thunderbird 1.5.0.5 build. It fixes – as you might know – several security issues, applies several patches … so nothing unusual.

However, there is one interesting and maybe useful change: a patch which provides the core feature needed to make a reply-to-list extension possible in thunderbird.

I often red complains that thunderbird has no reply-to-list feature. Thus, I decided to ship this patch for etch. In general, I don’t add features upstream has not yet included. But this one looks important enough for me to not remember my own rules .

In order to make use of this feature, do this:

Install enigmail or mnenhy extension. I would suggest enigmail which is in the debian archive (aptitude install enigmail)
Install the Reply-To-List Extension from this address.
Press Ctrl+I (yes, Ctrl-L is already in use, sorry) in order to reply to list.
or add the Reply-To-List button to your toolbar and press that one.

Ah, here a screenshot,

Reply To List Button and Key-Binding in Debian Thunderbird 1.5.0.5

Anyone disagrees with the decision to ship this in etch?

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Thank you so much for this Please, keep the patch applied for the final version which will be in etch.

This feature is the only one I was expecting to migrate fully to Thunderbird at home (was already using it at work). I installed the updated package and I’m already using it and loving it so much.

I wouldn’t mind this litle deviation from upstream as this patch is going to be in Thunderbird 3.0 anyway and also because it provides a very much needed feature for Debian users which subscribe to lots os mailing lists as I do.

#1 Andre Luis Lopes on 2006-08-13 17:44 (Reply)

Good decision!
Hopefully this will lead all relevant future MUA-flamewars to the recommendation to use etch’s thunderbird, until upstream finally includes this feature.

#2 Guido Heumann on 2006-08-13 17:46 (Reply)

OMFG YES.

(thank you).

#3 Alex on 2006-08-13 17:54 (Reply)

Yes, yes, yes, ooooh, yes! Maybe this can mitigate at least a few of the reoccuring flamewars about reply-to-list vs reply-to-all…

#4 David Weinehall on 2006-08-13 18:54 (Reply)

Is there an upstream bug / patch for this?

– Chris

#5 Chris Cunningham (Homepage) on 2006-08-14 03:22 (Reply)

The bug is named on the extensions homepage: it is one of the really old ones ... see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45715.

#5.1 asac (Homepage) on 2006-08-14 12:52 (Reply)

Excellent work!

I’m the author of the extension and the patch. If anyone finds any problems with the extension, please let me know, either on the patch’s wiki page ( http://open.nit.ca/wiki/login/index.php?page=ReplyToListThunderbirdExtension ) or peter.mccurdy at gmail dot com.

#6 Peter McCurdy (Homepage) on 2006-08-14 18:27 (Reply)

Oops, how about we try a working link? That’d be http://open.nit.ca/wiki/index.php?page=ReplyToListThunderbirdExtension

#7 Peter McCurdy (Homepage) on 2006-08-14 18:34 (Reply)

The only problem I see is that the patch adds very visible, translatable strigns which won’t be covered by the thunderbird-locales. That’s not so good, from the l10n POV. :/

#8 Jordi (Homepage) on 2006-10-04 00:46 (Reply)

Good point!!

I will think about this. Any ideas from your side?

asac

#8.1 Alexander Sack (Homepage) on 2006-10-04 00:53 (Reply)

Note that the C++ patch doesn’t add any visible strings. Only my extension does. At the moment, my extension isn’t in Debian. So on the one hand, co-ordination with thunderbird-locales will be a bit hard, but on the other hand, it’s not strictly speaking Debian’s problem for now, it’s only my problem.

How do other localizable extensions deal with this problem?

#8.2 Peter McCurdy (Homepage) on 2006-10-04 01:51 (Reply)

Not many, other than mobilising debian-i18n to provide translations for the added strings, and hack a way to add them to the thunderbird-locales debian dir and stick them in the .jar files at build time.

Wow, I might not be a bot, but this captcha is sometimes difficult to figure out

#9 Jordi (Homepage) on 2006-10-04 01:43 (Reply)

Peter, I guess they ship their own langpacks, ie, another extension. I can ask Toni, the Catalan Firefox/TB/SeaMonkey translator who has also translated a bunch of extensions.

Ok, Toni is telling me that it’s usual to ship all the translations with the actual extension. Enigmail did what I was assuming in the first paragraph, though.

It seems the usual way is to pack the translations in. Even enigmail does now, apparently.

That would solve the Debian problem.

#10 Jordi (Homepage) on 2006-10-04 02:02 (Reply)

OK, well, at least it’s really simple to add new translations to an extension. I’ll be sure to update the extension with any translations people care to send me.

At some point I should think about getting the extension into Debian as well, since you fine folks are the only ones distributing a version of Thunderbird where the extension works at all. This would at least make it easier for people to get updated translations.

#10.1 Peter McCurdy (Homepage) on 2006-10-04 02:11 (Reply)

If you prepare such a package, I can sponsor it. Usually, I don’t like to put non-native extensions into the archive, as there is no need to build for a multitude of architectures, but since this extension cannot yet be downloaded from the official extension site, I would do it anyways.

#10.1.1 asac on 2006-10-04 17:27 (Reply)

Since I’m sure a large fraction of the ReplyToList users read this blog, I figured I’d mention that I just released version 0.2.0 of the extension. The key (i.e. only) new feature is that the button gets disabled when it can’t find the List-Post header.

You can get it directly from http://open.nit.ca/wiki/attachments/replytolist-0.2.0.xpi

#11 Peter McCurdy (Homepage) on 2006-10-15 00:36 (Reply)

Please note that you might want to update the link to the replyToList extension since now is at a new developer:

http://cweiske.de/misc_extensions.htm

The new location is:

http://www.juergen-ernst.de/addons/replytolist.html

#12 Eddy Petrișor on 2008-07-01 23:08 (Reply)

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