Bug 2027 - Please align TB default apps with Mageia defaults
Summary: Please align TB default apps with Mageia defaults
Status: ASSIGNED
Alias: None
Product: Mageia
Classification: Unclassified
Component: RPM Packages (show other bugs)
Version: Cauldron
Hardware: All Linux
Priority: Normal normal
Target Milestone: Mageia 5
Assignee: Florian Hubold
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 2869 (view as bug list)
Depends on: 4461 11119
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2011-07-04 19:18 CEST by Frank Griffin
Modified: 2019-02-20 00:37 CET (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Source RPM: mozilla-thunderbird
CVE:
Status comment:


Attachments

Description Frank Griffin 2011-07-04 19:18:14 CEST
Currently, Thunderbird is lacking many of the MIME or extension associations with default applications compared to the desktop File Manager.  Others are just wrong.

For example, a message has a PowerPoint attachment with the following headers:

Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-powerpoint; name="Life.pps"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Life.pps"

but double-clicking on it gives:

/tmp/Life-1.pps could not be opened, because the associated helper application does not exist. Change the association in your preferences.

If you open the preferences and examine the Attachment list, it is extremely skeletal and is missing many standard MIME types, e.g. all of the "vnd-" entries.  In other cases, it is using non-standard apps, e.g. Abiword for OpenOffice Documents rather than LibreOffice.

It's not really obvious whether TB should query the current desktop, or initially set everything to "Ask" with a browsable default.  Probably, where Mageia uses non-DM-specific apps as defaults, e.g. Firefox rather than Epiphany or Konqueror, that is the app TB should use regardless of desktop.
Comment 1 Manuel Hiebel 2011-09-29 15:16:36 CEST
*** Bug 2869 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Manuel Hiebel 2011-09-29 15:17:39 CEST

CC: (none) => anssi.hannula

Anssi Hannula 2011-09-29 15:21:04 CEST

CC: (none) => doktor5000

Comment 2 Anssi Hannula 2011-09-29 15:24:25 CEST
Recently for me TB has started opening links in Firefox instead of the browser configured in KDE.

Not 100% sure if the previous behaviour was out-of-the-box or if I had configured it manually at some point. In any case, the behavior changed on an update (I can't really pinpoint which one, either, sorry).
Comment 3 Florian Hubold 2011-09-29 19:46:22 CEST
@Anssi: you need to change the following with gconf-editor:
/desktop/gnome/url-handlers/{ftp,http,https} to www-browser (xdg-open) and set your default browser with the means of your DE.

Sadly TB does not respect it's own internal settings anymore (aka network.protocol-handler.app.$protocol, see upstream developer comment: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=550755#c1) and also the applications handling is quite bad.

Will take a look if noone beats me to it. IIUC, thunderbird uses mailcap file for that associationing in general. Maybe it can be switched to use shared-mime-database?

But what is needed at least would be a simple list,
listing all file/mime types which are considered as "common".

Volunteers?

Status: NEW => ASSIGNED
Assignee: bugsquad => doktor5000

Comment 4 Frank Griffin 2011-09-29 20:35:20 CEST
>But what is needed at least would be a simple list,
>listing all file/mime types which are considered as "common".

Isn't that what shared-mime-database is ?
Comment 5 Florian Hubold 2011-09-29 20:48:03 CEST
Are all of those really needed/common?
But basically we want to have at least the same list as in firefox, yes?

Just looked, and for TB 3.1.15 in Mageia 1 there are 11 entries in that list, really disappointing :(
Comment 6 Luc Menut 2011-09-30 00:42:40 CEST
We should clarify here, if we talk about Thunderbird 7 in Cauldron or Thunderbird 3.1.* in Mageia 1, because TB 3.1.* can only use the deprecated gnomevfs, and TB 7 use gio (see https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501#c12).

With which desktop environment do you have this bug?
If it's with KDE in Cauldron, can you reproduce the problem with Thunderbird 7 and Gnome in Cauldron?

CC: (none) => lmenut

Comment 7 Frank Griffin 2011-09-30 01:01:44 CEST
This is in KDE  Cauldon currently.  I haven't tried GNOME  since  3 came in.
Comment 8 Florian Hubold 2011-09-30 09:12:24 CEST
Status update: On Mageia 1, currently testing TB 3.1.15, if i remove my ~/.thunderbird/profileid.default/mimetypes.rdf then Thunderbird seems to use shared-mime-info AFAICT. mimtetypes.rdf gets recreated, but without any actions in it.

Only that the thunderbird list of attachments/associated actions is now empty. But that's OK, as mime associations should be configured via the means of the DE.
Comment 9 Florian Hubold 2011-11-25 13:13:20 CET
ping?
Comment 10 Frank Griffin 2012-01-13 16:47:45 CET
Sorry, I missed your September post.  In current cauldron, deleting mimetypes.rdf causes, with a *.docx attachment, an "Ask" prompt whose "Open" choice gives you a dropdown of "Archive Manager (default)", and allows no other choice.

So, (1) the defaults are still wrong, and (2) it is not getting  them from the DE.
Comment 11 Florian Hubold 2012-02-17 20:30:30 CET
This seems related to https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4461
Comment 12 Frank Griffin 2012-04-15 19:07:28 CEST
ping ?  Can anyone confirm this or not ?
Comment 13 Marja Van Waes 2012-05-26 13:07:46 CEST
Hi,

This bug was filed against cauldron, but we do not have cauldron at the moment.

Please report whether this bug is still valid for Mageia 2.

Thanks :)

Cheers,
marja

Keywords: (none) => NEEDINFO

Frank Griffin 2012-06-12 21:35:54 CEST

Keywords: NEEDINFO => (none)
Whiteboard: (none) => MGA2TOO

Florian Hubold 2012-06-15 20:47:38 CEST

Depends on: (none) => 4461

Comment 14 Florian Hubold 2014-04-13 15:35:06 CEST
The bug in general (default applications in Thunderbird) is still valid IMHO but I've not tested yet with a fresh install, only with my existing TB profile carried over since 1.x

FWIW, I've only got 4 associations in settings -> attachments -> receive from which I've defined 3 myself (pdf, png and jpeg) and .zip which is set to "always ask".

Please somebody create a test case in the wiki so this can be tackled in the development phase for Mageia 5.

Target Milestone: --- => Mageia 5
Source RPM: mozilla-thunderbird-3.1.11-2.mga2.x86_64.rpm => mozilla-thunderbird
Whiteboard: MGA2TOO => (none)

Comment 15 Florian Hubold 2014-04-17 15:51:04 CEST
(In reply to Florian Hubold from comment #14)
> 
> Please somebody create a test case in the wiki so this can be tackled in the
> development phase for Mageia 5.

I've created a draft test case and some related links in the wiki:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/User:Doktor5000#Default_applications_handling_in_Firefox_.26_Thunderbird

Along with the related topic of default applications in general:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/User:Doktor5000#Default_applications_.28e.g._default_browser.29_systemwide_.2F_per-desktop

Please everybody test and provide feedback.
Comment 16 Florian Hubold 2014-08-24 17:40:34 CEST
Adding bug#11119 as TB still respects mailcap file and ours is totally outdated.

Depends on: (none) => 11119

Florian Hubold 2014-08-24 18:16:33 CEST

See Also: (none) => https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2051

Comment 17 Florian Hubold 2014-08-24 19:48:49 CEST
Just tested latest thunderbird in cauldron, and it doesn't contain a mimeTypes.rdf anymore, and also doesn't seem to read /etc/mailcap nor anything else - default incoming attachment is pretty empty :/

Would be good if someone could add some commonly used filetypes to https://wiki.mageia.org/en/User:Doktor5000#Some_arbitrary_links_to_filetypes_for_testing and prepare a mail with the same filetypes (some small example, no big files) so we have a base for testing.

@Frank: Could you do that?
Comment 18 Frank Griffin 2014-08-25 22:42:49 CEST
I'm happy to help, but I'm not exactly sure I understand how TB gets its defaults from upstream in our RPM, or what (if anything) we do to customize this.
  
I also thought that MGA systems decided on default applications in a lot of different and competing ways that were desktop-specific.  Most of the desktops have their own widgets for setting a preferred app for a filetype, and I'm betting they don't all share a common format.

Anyway, it happens that my cauldron TB *does* have a mimeTypes.rdf that seems to have some fairly sane defaults in it, but these are probably a result of me keeping the same ~/.thunderbird directory for years.  There's also an oldMimeTypes.rtf which dates from 2011.  If it would help, I can attach them here.

The mimeTypes.rdf seems to be an XML document that doesn't contain any app names itself but refers to different URN directions for finding app names.

I'm not sure what happens when several apps that can handle a particular filetype have been installed by urpmi in a random order, with each installing itself as the preferred app for that filetype.  How does TB contend with that ?
Comment 19 Florian Hubold 2014-08-25 23:15:50 CEST
(In reply to Frank Griffin from comment #18)
> I'm happy to help, but I'm not exactly sure I understand how TB gets its
> defaults from upstream in our RPM, or what (if anything) we do to customize
> this.

Well, it _should_ get it's defaults via system-wide mime definitions. There's no mimeTypes.rdf in our package anymore, and default file associations are empty.

So best work out an example mail with some commonly used filetypes (pdf,odt,mp3,doc,xls and so on) and test to see what opens. I can also try to ask upstream via thunderbird ml's on this topic with some results.

In your case, best move away/rename both mimeTypes.rdf and see how it behaves, and try to provide feedback in simple plaintext form like I tried with firefox: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/User:Doktor5000#Test_case_.26_results_2 with expected and actual results.
Comment 20 Frank Griffin 2019-02-20 00:37:16 CET
Ping ?

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