Right time to complete the thunderbird email plugin?

[shiku...@gmail.com]

The development of a thunderbird email plugin for Quicksilver is a frequently posted user request. Developing a plugin however remained problematic:

Rob had proposed a Thunderbird plugin solution, however the problems below hindered its realisation:

- Thunderbird's cross platform orientation did not integrate well with the OS X's Cocoa/Objective-C environment until now
- an user's default email client settings were held within the Mail.app own preference settings
    - what made accessing the required outgoing email settings multiple part problem (determining the default email client and accessing the SMTP server settings in the client) and possibly harder to maintain

I am excited that recent changes within OS X and Thunderbird now seem to have solved large pieces of the puzzle to allow the plugin to be completed:
- the user's default email client can be determined via Launch Services or applescript (and here)  - the info.plist file entries seem unfortunately to vary for each email client
  [Along the way, getting the default email client might resolve a bug regarding setting the email handler in QuickSilver as well]
- Thunderbird's Multiple Account API can now provide the default SMTP-server settings for a profile

So please could we have some feedback, or a discussion on whether these changes do support the completion of the plugin. And if possible, can we get a community effort going to complete the plugin? I am not a programmer, but willing to help in any other way this magic happen.

 

[Rob McBroom]

On 11 Feb 2014, at 22:46, shiku...@gmail.com wrote:

So please could we have some feedback, or a discussion on whether these changes do support the completion of the plugin. And if possible, can we get a community effort going to complete the plugin? I am not a programmer, but willing to help in any other way this magic happen. 

The good news is that I just created a new plug-in for MailMate, so whoever takes this on will have a nice, clean, known-to-work example for reference. There’s really only one file to worry about¹, and in that file only two important methods: One to support sending directly, and one to support sending/composing using the client.

You’d just need to gut smtpServerDetails and rewrite it to read settings from ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/[your profile]/prefs.js. The relevant settings are pretty easy to find if you just search for “smtpserver”. (It might also be possible to get these settings using the new API.)

Now, God help you when it comes to getting Thunderbird to compose or send a new message in sendEmailTo:from:subject:body:attachments:sendNow:. Hopefully that new API allows such things.

--
Rob McBroom
http://www.skurfer.com/

---

1. One file with code, that is. Of course you need a new project with unique names and you have to set all the appropriate values in the property list. ↩

[Rob McBroom]

On 12 Feb 2014, at 11:12, Rob McBroom wrote:

You’d just need to gut smtpServerDetails and rewrite it to read settings from~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/[your profile]/prefs.js. The relevant settings are pretty easy to find if you just search for “smtpserver”.

Note that the prefs.js format and location is essentially unchanged for 10 or more years, so someone could have done this at any point. The new API doesn’t change that.

[shiku...@gmail.com]

Thanks Rob for responding quickly to my post.

At first, I had a disappointment, as the referenced API documentation had been recently updated only to indicate it was old. So it seemed there is no change on that side.

After further digging around, I came across this fixed bug on bugzilla, implying the sending a message with attachement via a running Thunderbird process  is now possible. I tested on my machine and it works. Hoorah, i believe..

Let's now check, whether all the other command line arguments also function on OSX. Then we would be home free..

If this is all working, I am motivated to follow your tips and try develop the plugin by myself (even though it has been quite a while I last programmed). I'll rely on the community help improve the result until we have something that works.

The setting of Thunderbird as default email handler in Quicksilver remains an open issue. Has the fix mentioned in my first post been released?

Thanks
Shiku

[Rob McBroom]

On 13 Feb 2014, at 12:53, shiku...@gmail.com wrote:

Let's now check, whether all the other command line arguments also function
on OSX. Then we would be home free..

I hope you’re right, but it seems unlikely that you’ll be able to allow all of Quicksilver’s functionality. I don’t think the Gmail plug-in allows everything either, so that’s not necessarily a reason to give up.

Two things I would do to get an idea what the plug-in should allow:

• Go to Preferences → Actions → By Plugin → E-mail Support and look at the actions
• Read the built-in help for the E-mail Support plug-in to get an idea what each action does. Those are the things the plug-in should make Thunderbird do.

If this is all working, I am motivated to follow your tips and try develop
the plugin by myself (even though it has been quite a while I last
programmed). I'll rely on the community help improve the result until we
have something that works.

That would be great. Post any questions you might have to the dev Google Group: quicksilver---development

The setting of Thunderbird as default email handler in Quicksilver remains
an open issue. Has the fix mentioned in my first post been released?

What fix? The things you see listed under Handlers are Quicksilver plug-ins, not applications. Since there is no Thunderbird plug-in (yet), you shouldn’t expect to see it listed there.