Image handling in Thunderbird
Is it really true that Thunderbird is still unable to handle image rotation and sizing within the app? I've been Googling for help on why whenever I try to post a portrait image, it gets rotated to landscape. It seems that 1. TB cannot utilise any rotation metadata in images, and 2. that TB cannot physically do anything to rotte an image.
Worse still, at least one Add-on developer produced an extension to do this simple task, but constant "updates" to TB have broken it so many times that he has become disolusioned and will do no further work to fix it, stating that TB are totally unhelpful and dont provide adequate documentation of changes.
Very sad if true. So... is there a way to get my simple phone images to display properly in TB without having to resort to separate image editing programs?
All Replies (4)
This link has a 'Chosen solution' that fully explains what is going on.
Pictures are stored with pixel (0,0) at top left. If they have accompanying data that tells the viewing program to rotate it to some other orientation, and that viewing program honours such requests, then the image will be rotated at the point of being displayed to the appropriate orientation. The image itself as stored is not altered; it is simply painted to the canvas according to the rotation data.
Thunderbird is an email client, not a graphics program, and its design predates the use of smartphones with orientation detectors. It doesn't know or care about the orientation data embedded into images taken with such devices, and so it simply shows the image with pixel (0,0) at top left.
You need to rotate that image yourself, rewriting it so that the visual top left is at pixel (0,0). That means using a graphic program to rewrite the image in the appropriate orientation.
Sadly, many people use addons but do not contribute to their maintenance and so the authors are expected to learn code and spend their time in updating; even complete rewriting of code for free. Many authors have not updated in a while or lost interest. some simply do not have the inclination or time especially when they do not get renumeration for it. It is a sad fact that people get used to free addons and do not consider the serious amount of time it takes to write the code and maintain it.
The recent changes in Thunderbird were not sudden. This was known along time ago; and I mean years, about the inevitable change as it was important to keep up with technology and security issues. There is a whole host of documentation on webextensions, but seriously, it can mean learning a whole bunch of stuff, so it is not surprising that some addon authors choose to throw in the towel, so to speak. It would also mean maintaining both legacy and webextensions versions. Just to give you an idea, here are a couple of links to some documention which has a web of other links etc. It can seem a mine field of complexity.
- https://developer.thunderbird.net/add-ons/updating/tb68
- https://developer.thunderbird.net/add-ons/updating/tb68/changes
It would not be unreasonable to say they were propbably unappreciated by the majority of people who used addons and understandable if they feel that way.
Toad-Hall said
This link has a 'Chosen solution' that fully explains what is going on.
Thanks for the link, but it was actually my reading of that explanation which prompted me to post! It explains *why* TB doesn't handle images in a useful way, but does nothing to suggest it could be improved.
Thunderbird is an email client, not a graphics program, Thunderbird pre-dates smartphones
And that's not helpful, to the end user, OR to TBs owners, if people start to look elsewhere... Thunderbird should be the BEST way of sending emails, and emails can contain images and so TB should make it EASY to add images. I bet other email clients *do* follow the metadata. Thunderbird also has an Android version *specifically designed* to work on smartphones, and therefore it should be made competent at inserting images made on those smartphones.
If an add-on designer can make it happen, couldn't the core program designers make it happen too. It's that sort of useful improvement that would make people stick with TB, rather than all the changes that (to me as an end-user) do nothing to make the app work better and just break existing add-on comparability.
Sorry, this is not intended to be a rant, but I want to get across that there's no point in having the most secure email app if no'-one wants to use it because of daft limitations.
Modified by Andy_P
re : Thunderbird also has an Android version
Mozilla Thunderbird has not developed an app to work on any phone; it is a desktop email client. There is no mobile version of Thunderbird for any mobile OS's including iOS and Android. Due to the more limited resources of the Thunderbird community and there is little chance of a Android version in near future.
There is an app developed by ApponFly that can connect to Thunderbird via using the cloud through an account - so it accesses remotely, but there is a charge.
If you have a gmail account then andriod can connect to gmail and see same emails as you would see in thunderbird, but that is not Thunderbird running on android.
However, I see your point about Thunderbird not having the ability to recognise certain aspects that you would only expect in a graphics product. So I've had a dig round in bugzilla to see there is any development going on and located the following info: