Feature Request: a Mac version for ThunderLink ?

[lauhub]

Would it be possible to provide a Mac OS X version for this addon ?

[poohsen]

I looked into this before and it's not really possible, I'm afraid. In particular the functionality where TB is already open and piping the TL into it makes it select the right email.
If you're happy with firing up a new instance of a TB email display window for every TL you want to process, I can check if that's possible, but I have little hope.

[lauhub]

Why ? Is there a limitation in OS X ? What is the difference with other OSes ?

[poohsen]

I'm no expert on OSX so I don't understand what's really causing the difference, but if you run the executable when an instance of TB is already running, the command line args aren't passed to TB like they are on Ubuntu or Windows.

I experimented with the "open" command, but that only get's you anywhere when TB isn't running. This would open a window where the linked email would be displayed:

open /Applications/Thunderbird.app/ --args -thunderlink thunderlink://messageid=<the_messageid>

but once opened, issuing the command again won't do anything. You'd have to close the TB instance first before you could open a different thunderlink. If you use the -n switch to create a new instance of TB, you just get an error message. So you get about 20% of the functionality/user experience compared to win/linux.

If you still want to experiment with it: download the 1.2.1 version from here and install it from file in TB. Then give it a try from the command line.

[lauhub]

Yes, it is strange.

When I run open /Applications/Thunderbird.app/ --args -jsconsole -options it works for me (opens the Javascript console and the Options dialog).

open /Applications/Thunderbird.app/ --args -new-instance does just reopen the current TB window (no error message for me).

What is you OS X version ?

The open command should work according to the man page.

Did you try using double or single quotes ?

open /Applications/Thunderbird.app/ --args '-thunderlink thunderlink://messageid=<the_messageid>'

To launch TB under OS X, you could call also this:

/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird -thunderlink thunderlink://messageid=<the_messageid>

Actually, the .app file is not a file but a directory. It contains some files that you can access directly. But this last one could be sufficient if it works.

[poohsen]

"To launch TB under OS X, you could call also this:

/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird -thunderlink thunderlink://messageid=<the_messageid> "

true, but this here still gives me an error about only one instance of TB being possible:

/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird -new-instance -thunderlink thunderlink://messageid=<tlid>

I tried with double quotes and without, and now also with single quotes. It's clear that the command line options get passed to TB alright if it's _not_running. Once fired up, however, OSX seems to intercept repeated invocations to the executable

[lauhub]

And without the -new-instance ?

Do you have a guide to install it on TB for OS X ? I'll try to see if I have the same behaviour, as I do not have the error message like you with -new-instance args.

[lauhub]

OK, sorry, I did not see I could install it from this page. I tried the following:

No errors and nothing happens if I use this:
open /Applications/Thunderbird.app --args -thunderlink thunderlink://[email protected] -new-instance

An error message indicating a new instance could not be opened with this:
/Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/thunderbird -thunderlink thunderlink://[email protected]

(with or without the -new-instance parameter).

Did you file an issue at Mozilla for this ? Hopefully, they could correct this in next versions

[poohsen]

I didn't, as I don't think this is a Mozilla issue but rather a peculiarity of OSX. If you research this further, I'd be interested in your results, though

[lauhub]

Well, I don't think this is due to OSX.

I think it is due to TB build on OSX (may be due to some OSX's specific feature but that should be correct from TB side).

I have other apps that do not have the same problem (an error message when opening an URL e.g.).

Do you want me to file the bug ?

[poohsen]

sounds like it's worth a try

[lauhub]

Bug opened: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1089634

I suggest you to vote up this bug ;)

[mikehardy]

This bug is quite old, but I wanted to note that they fixed the upstream bug just a few days ago, and in the meantime you can configure ThunderLink to interoperate very well with macOS/Mail.app - my preferred method https://github.com/mikehardy/thunderlink/wiki/macOS-compatibility---interoperability

[mikehardy]

Another update to this very very old bug but this is definitively solved in 1.2.7