Sunday, August 13. 2006
thunderbird + reply-to-list ... here it comes
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,
Anyone disagrees with the decision to ship this in etch?
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
Oops, how about we try a working link? That’d be http://open.nit.ca/wiki/index.php?page=ReplyToListThunderbirdExtension
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. :/
Good point!!
I will think about this. Any ideas from your side?
asac
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
/me on Identi.ca
asac: insane that there are so many power plug types; surely countries suffer from heavy NIH here
asac: found myself answering questions on #ubuntu IRC channel; #sunday fnu
asac: omg ... you might remember that I really didn't like dallas. Now it seems I have to go there again :/
asac: submitted #clutk merge request to directly link against gl/glew - http://bit.ly/cTqix2
asac: getting started on my typical high dose of daily calls now ;)
asac: contuing ... one more #maverick respin for libclutter-perl_1.002-1.0build1
asac: clutk_0.3.50-0ubuntu3 required some porting, but here it is. all should be fine still.
