F-Spot can't send mail using Thunderbird

[Mihai Capotă]

Binary package hint: f-spot

The "Send Mail..." feature in F-Spot doesn't work with Thunderbird in Gutsy. It was working in Feisty.
The dialog appears and F-Spot creates the lower resolution photos for the e-mail in "/tmp", but Thunderbird opens an error message saying "An error occurred while creating a message compose window. Please try again."
I can create a new Thunderbird message window complete with attachments from the command line just fine.
It seems to me that F-Spot is calling Thunderbird with the wrong parameters.

[Johannes Weiß (weissi)]

can confirm this in Gutsy (7.10)

console output of f-spot:
--- SNIP ---
[...]
value = f-spot version 0.4.0 len = 20
value = 2007:11:16 10:59:51 len = 19
Saved 16896 bytes
xdg-open: unexpected option '-compose'
Try 'xdg-open --help' for more information.
--- SNAP ---

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your report, that's known upstream, you can track it here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=472715

[YetOpen S.r.l. (commerciale)]

I don't think it's the same problem of bgo#472715. In that bug the user have a new mail window without attachments.
I'm running Gutsy and emailing images works fine.
What do you have in Gnome's preferred applications? Try setting Thunderbird from the drop-down list, if a customized command is present.

[Mihai Capotă (mihaic)]

YetOpen S.r.l. a scris:
> What do you have in Gnome's preferred applications? Try setting Thunderbird from the drop-down list, if a customized command is present.

I have two machines running Gutsy. I selected Thunderbird from the
drop-down list on both of them. Using "Send Mail..." in F-Spot doesn't
work. I get message saying "An error occurred while creating a message
compose window. Please try again."

[Maxxer (lorenzo-milesi)]

try this from command line:

thunderbird -compose "subject=test"

should pop up a thunderbird compose window. f-spot issues this command, with the attachment just after.

[Mihai Capotă (mihaic)]

thunderbird -compose "subject=test"

Works fine. So does

thunderbird -compose
"subject=test,attachment=',file:///test1,file:///test2'"

which is what F-Spot should do, if I understood the source code correctly.

[Maxxer (lorenzo-milesi)]

xdg-open is Freedesktop stuff...
Why is xdg-open called if f-spot issues thunderbird directly?

[MrFSL (hwdiminished)]

I can verify this issue. No compose window is created. The image files are resized in /tmp.

f-spot -version
F-Spot 0.4.0.0 - (c)2003-2007, Novell Inc

thunderbird -v
Thunderbird 2.0.0.6, Copyright (c) 1998-2007 mozilla.org

cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.22-14-generic (buildd@terranova) (gcc version 4.1.3 20070929 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.2-16ubuntu2)) #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 08:02:57 UTC 2007

[FlagMan (flagman)]

Had the same issue.

F-spot sends a string like this to the default mail program:
mailto:?subject=my%20photos&attach=/tmp/somefile.jpg

_For attachments_ Thunderbird wants to be called like this:
 thunderbird -compose "subject=my%20photos,attachment='file:///tmp/somefile.jpg'"

I dont know who should behave better, but clearly this is different.
Also, if you set Thunderbird as your default, it will be called without
the -compose option, and it will fail _for attachments only_

Good News:
I have a workaround in /usr/local/bin/thunderbird-mailto.py
(sorry dont remember where from)
Then, in Sytem->Preferences->PreferredApps I entered
the following custom command as default mail
 "/usr/local/bin/thunderbird-mailto.py %s"

Works for me.
Good luck.

[Mihai Capotă (mihaic)]

The "thunderbird-mailto.py" script also works for me.

Thanks, FlagMan.

[Maia Everett (linneris)]

Does this still occur in Hardy?

[FlagMan (flagman)]

Removed reference to gnome-bug 472715, it is a different issue.

[FlagMan (flagman)]

fwiw, the real fspot discussion can be found here:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=168585

Interesting discussion.
It was considered fixed a year ago.
The relevant file, SendEmail.cs, should contain a workaround that
queries the Preferences and builds a customized mailto-url
for each and every mail-client.
Looks ok on first sight, but dunno if the version i was looking
at was the real gutsy-stuff, and if so why it doesnt do its thing.

[Chris Jones (cmsj)]

Since this is fixed upstream and in the Hardy version, shouldn't it be marked Fix Released for Ubuntu?

[Mihai Capotă (mihaic)]

I confirm that the problem has been fixed in Hardy.

[Francois Rigaut (francois.rigaut)]

The python script works for me too. Thanks for that.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

marking it as fixed then, thanks for reporting.

[Costas (launchpad-z-capitao)]

The python script was working for me under gutsy too, but then it stopped. Looking at it the script there were two paths:

1) if thunderbird is running, use -remote and sleep before deleting files
2) if thunderbird is not running use -compose and do not sleep before deleting files

I guess using the -compose option expected thunderbird not to return until it had finished with the files?

Anyway, the script was taking the second path even when thunderbird was running, and deleting the files instantly. I am not sure what changed to make it start doing this.

I fixed it just by making it always sleep whichever path it takes (the new version is attached).

[decoherence (totalmassretain)]

This is not fixed for me in Hardy. Fresh install of 8.04.1. Thunderbird pops up a compose window but nothing is attached. 2.6.24-19-generic i686, f-spot 0.4.3.1-0ubuntu1