Update to TB 128/Nebula: asking for donations

[opto]

There are a lot of changes in TB 115 (and now TB 128 which is still being totally rewritten)), because the main window has been converted to html, and many global access points to internal functions have been moved, renamed or are gone.

So the addon update for this TB update (115) is really a lot of work, so donations are very much appreciated.

Donations by Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=6K57TUFSNMVSJ&source=url

EDIT: the news on TB 128 are ca. 142 posts further down

many thanks, Klaus

[CockyCaucasian]

for those where a tab with the email opens: for unknown reasons, the folder must be selected with the up/down keys. Even when it is already written into the box, please select it in the selection box with up/down key, then it moves - both from inboxor subfolders

Writing the folder name into the box and confirming it with a tab also works.

This works indeed, but is not very handy. Hitting return before tab will activate whatever has the focus. It it's the mail, it will open in a new tab, but it can be any control. For instance I just activated a button that sends a spam report by mistake because I didn't type Tab before typing Return. So this is a bit annoying, any way to fix this ?

Another problem: sometimes (I haven't figure out when exactly) after saving a mail, the viewport into the table of the inbox jumps forward, instead of staying where it is and showing the message following the saved message.

I am with HGuillemet regarding hitting return before tab. Major inconvenience. Please please fix.

[henning]

Well, if i donate to an Open Source project i honestly expect that code is openly released, not just binaries.

What's the reason for not committing and pushing current development in some dev branch? it's super easy with git.

[dbergol]

@henning: if you follow the link that opto has posted you will find a link to the binary AND a link to the source code. So, what are you missing? Best Danel

[henning]

@henning: if you follow the link that opto has posted you will find a link to the binary AND a link to the source code. So, what are you missing? Best Danel

The source code zip says "Jan 13, 2022" so thats a dump of the latest stuff in git while the binary is produced from something the developer self says it's only on his personal harddisk, so I assume the date information on the zip is correct.

Please let the developer respond themselves why they dont commit stuff to git. it's just two commands, creating a branch one more.

[opto]

actually, the "binary" is the code. an xpi is a zip. Just unzip and you have the code

[opto]

hitting tab or arrow keys: yes, if possible, that will be fixed

[henning]

thanks @opto!

i already started to wonder if that might be the case and planned on checking if xpi is really just a zip…

but i still don't understand why there are no git commits and a development/feature branch as it’s best practice. i find it confusing.

if the reason is lacking experience to work with git i can offer you personal support to get into it!

On Sat 7. Oct 2023 at 18:51, Klaus Buecher @.***> wrote:

actually, the "binary" is the code. an xpi is a zip. Just unzip and you have the code

[hkclark]

thanks @opto! i already started to wonder if that might be the case and planned on checking if xpi is really just a zip… but i still don't understand why there are no git commits and a development/feature branch as it’s best practice. i find it confusing. if the reason is lacking experience to work with git i can offer you personal support to get into it! … On Sat 7. Oct 2023 at 18:51, Klaus Buecher @.***> wrote: actually, the "binary" is the code. an xpi is a zip. Just unzip and you have the code

@opto and @henning I'm happy to help in that regard too (spend all day in git with my job). @opto One advantage of using git and especially GitHub (or similar tools like GitLab) is that it makes it easy for other people to send you a Pull Request that you can review (and discuss & modify) before it is potentially merged into the main code branch. So basically, it let's you get free help. :-) As active as this community is around and about Nostalgy++, I would think people would do that if they could use the "normal tools". Also, I would be happy to contribute documentation improvements that way. Just some thoughts, but let us know if we can help. Thanks again!!

[eengstrom]

Upgraded to TB 115.x today, and downloaded XPI 4.04 - things are mostly working. Is there a tag or keyword or something for which you'd like us to post feedback, @opto ?

Also, seconding others comments, like @hkclark and @henning have stated - if you use git to it's fullest, those of us with the skills to help can contribute PRs. But without a git repo/branch to fork, it's really troublesome to use tarballs of the source. Any chance you are willing to open this up for more help so we can make faster progress?

[opto]

this version only needs enter, no arrow keys or tab, and old letters like S are working again

https://github.com/opto/nostalgy-xpi/releases/tag/v4.0.5

[CockyCaucasian]

Version 4.0.5 works great! Thank you!

[dbergol]

Great!! With 4.0.5 I'm "back to normal" working with Thunderbird. Past donations happily done - and future donations to come!!

[internationils]

Also donated a few weeks ago. Would also love to have the code in github so people can submit pull requests... would probably help get more features implemented & ease the maintenance burden.

[waltermelow]

Also donated a few weeks ago. Would also love to have the code in github so people can submit pull requests... would probably help get more features implemented & ease the maintenance burden.

+1 Above all to community involve in colaboration development.

[HGuillemet]

Shortcuts works now well to save mails from InBox, but when I'm in my Sent box, it doesn't work: s displays the usual field, but when I hit Return nothing happens. Is it a known problem ? Else can I do something to help diagnose ?

[opto]

this version now also works in email windows or email in a tab.

It has been minimally tested on Ubuntu 20.04 in addition to Win 11 were I am developing.

https://github.com/opto/nostalgy-xpi/releases/tag/4.0.7

[opto]

@HGuillemet : in 4.0.7, S moves both into or out of sent (Gesendet) folder.

If not at your end: which OS? Any red messages in error console (ctrl shift J)?

[HGuillemet]

I just installed 4.0.7. Move seems to work from Sent now, but I still get the same behavior sometimes, even from Inbox. The problem is maybe not related to the source folder... Here is the message in the error console:

Uncaught TypeError: hdr is null
    update_folder chrome://nostalgy/content/nfpredict.js:202
    NostalgyMoveToFolder chrome://nostalgy/content/nostalgy.js:1015
    NostalgyRunCommand chrome://nostalgy/content/nostalgy.js:662
    onNostalgyInputKeyPressed chrome://nostalgy/content/nostalgy.js:1251
    onkeydown chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xhtml:1
nfpredict.js:202:26

EDIT: os is Linux

[opto]

folder commands, 3 pane navigation an tags are working, the suggestions are having a problem and need a tab change after each use (see description in release): https://github.com/opto/nostalgy-xpi/releases/tag/4.0.10

[opto]

@HGuillemet the error message means that there is no first selected message in the view. In win, the messages can be selected in grey or, after a click, in blue. Does that make a difference?

[opto]

@HGuillemet this is when the problem happens: you select a message in a folder you view another folder go back to the original folder now, the message is selected in another color as when you click it you can still move it, but the headerforfirstselected message is empty (null), so we get the error message

[opto]

@HGuillemet I can remove the error in Nostalgy, but then your message does not count for the statistics, because TB does not tell us the header. The problem itself is in TB

[opto]

here, suggestions work, also focus messagepane https://github.com/opto/nostalgy-xpi/releases/tag/4.0.12

[mdonz]

When using a search with the "Quicker Quicksearch" add-on (i.e. Ctrl+Alt+B), the Escape key does not work any longer to clear that search result. To my delight, the "Show messages with same sender/subject" functionality from this add-on came back (means I would not need the Quicker Quicksearch add-on any longer) but the same happens there, Escape key does not clear the search results

[opto]

@mdonz see #232

[HGuillemet]

@opto Sorry for the late answer. You are right: the problem happened when you change folder. These 2 levels of selection in TB are quite confusing. What was weird is that even after reselecting the message, move still did not work. But you seem to have fix that in 4.1.0. Thanks. If the message isn't considered for statistics, it's not a big deal.

In case it helps, here are error messages still appearing in 4.1.0 in the console, but apparently without functional impact:

suggest: no selected messages 
XPCWrappedNative_NoHelper { QueryInterface: QueryInterface(), setJSTree: setJSTree(), open: open(), openWithHdrs: openWithHdrs(), close: close(), init: init(), sort: sort(), doCommand: doCommand(), doCommandWithFolder: doCommandWithFolder(), getCommandStatus: getCommandStatus(), … }

XPCWrappedNative_NoHelper { QueryInterface: QueryInterface(), URI: Getter, name: Getter & Setter, prettyName: Getter & Setter, abbreviatedName: Getter, setPrettyNameFromOriginal: setPrettyNameFromOriginal(), parent: Getter & Setter, messages: Getter, Init: Init(), startFolderLoading: startFolderLoading(), … }

suggest: no dbview nostalgy.js:785:13
    NostalgySuggest chrome://nostalgy/content/nostalgy.js:785
    NostalgyDefLabel chrome://nostalgy/content/nostalgy.js:534
    setIsMailTab chrome://nostalgy/content/manage_emails.jsm:257
    isMailTab jar:file:///home/hg/.thunderbird/r20ls9dd.default-default/extensions/nostalgy@opto.one.xpi!/chrome/content/api/Utilities/implementation.js:26
    result resource://gre/modules/ExtensionParent.sys.mjs:1144
    withCallContextData resource://gre/modules/ExtensionParent.sys.mjs:627
    result resource://gre/modules/ExtensionParent.sys.mjs:1143
    withPendingBrowser resource://gre/modules/ExtensionParent.sys.mjs:637
    result resource://gre/modules/ExtensionParent.sys.mjs:1142
    callAndLog resource://gre/modules/ExtensionParent.sys.mjs:1095
    recvAPICall resource://gre/modules/ExtensionParent.sys.mjs:1141

[semik]

With TB 115.4.1 Nostalgy 4.0.12 works just fine.

I'm using just moving emails into folder, but without this feature is TB useless for me.

Sent small donation. Thank you for your work :)

[flack]

Maybe I should open a new issue, but since it was mentioned before, I thought I'd post here first.

First, let me say thank you for maintaining this very useful addon, it's really helping a lot!

I am however slightly concerned about the missing git history. I mean sure, the code is technically available if you unpack the XPI file, but it's much harder than it should be to audit changes between versions. In the last week or two, something like three or four new releases got autoinstalled by Thunderbird and there's not really a viable way to see what has changed.

Again, thank you very much for maintaining this tool @opto, I really appreciate it, but just for clarity's sake I'd just like to ask if you plan to take this addon more into a closed-source direction, or if the missing commits are more of a temporary thing.

[r2evans]

@flack (and one or two others), I gotta say I'm a bit taken aback by the insistence on using git for a commit history, in order to ensure opto's work remains open-source. Unless I'm mistaken, there's nothing closed-source about a thunderbird extension: the code is clearly available in the file itself, and while I'm not a TB-extension maintainer, I don't see that changing any time soon. Whether opto chooses to maintain their own commit history in git, svn, cvs, bitbucket, hg, or even RCS's ci/co/... is completely beside the point: opto is volunteering their time to adopt and maintain this package, across a huge code migration path, and is providing it freely, both in code and in cost.

As much the point, though: this issue is for the migration from pre-115 to TB-115, a huge code rewrite. Granted, there have been a lot of different bugs discussed in this issue, all under the umbrella of TB-115 migration.

I think "direction" of a project is certainly a discussion that can be important and interesting, if the maintainer is willing to discuss it. In that case, open a new issue and keep it on-topic there. There is no board-of-directors/advisors, no steering committee, and no obligation for opto to respond to any of that. But I think this is the wrong place to be demanding it. Let's take licensing and long-term direction and commit-histories to another issue for discussion. Thanks!

[lepokle]

I'm fully with @r2evans. Yes, @henning and others, your are describing best practice for a software development project but @opto is spending his free time on this addon and is so kind to share his updates with us. He has no contract to maintain this project it is completely his free decision. On the other hand you are not forced to spend anything if you do not agree with anything of the project.

I gave money since this is a crucial addon for me and I'm very happy that someone takes care of the addon and make it work for TB115. I do not care for a best maintained git history but for a working version of the addon.

If someone of you really want to participate and improve things, start downloading the code and start to fix things, create pull requests and show by valuable effort and results that you are willing to participate and improve things.

Otherwise keep it with the suggestion from @r2evans and open an own issue for such things.

[dmusican]

I'm in agreement with @r2evans and @lepokle.

For folks who are interested in a commit history, you can also manufacture it yourself because all of the releases are available. You could create your own repo, and add a commit for each release that comes out.

[dbergol]

@henning: It is not completely clear to me, what one thing has to do with the other here: you are free to donate or not, as @opto is free to use git or not (or use git without publishing it). And you are even free to donate depending on "best-practices-used-or-not". But from my point of view a donation does not justify an expectation of how a developer spending his free time on a project should run his development. Just an opinion.

[dmusican]

For folks who are interested in a commit history, you can also manufacture it yourself because all of the releases are available. You could create your own repo, and add a commit for each release that comes out.

Git commits are not only code differences, but also comments and messages that explain the change.

@opto provides such comments in his release notes. You could convert those to commit messages.

[dmusican]

That's not the same as a proper git commit for each change in each file or if one thing needs a change .

Sure, though this has now moved beyond the request to have a commit history, and has now moved towards a more specific mandate that @opto correctly document each change with a specific approach. While I believe that to be a good software practice, I for one have no wish to micromanage @opto that way.

[jacquesdurden]

donated! Nostalgy++ saves my mail administration life each day.

[SKelem]

Donated!

[Gloutche]

I had no problem donating, I note with regret that it didn't stop popups asking for donations.

[r2evans]

@Gloutche nor would I expect that to change: unless you "register" somehow your donation mechanism/amount with the running extension, there's currently no way for it to know it should not display ads. I agree that it would be nice, but that would also involve a bit more tracking of users within the extension, something which I believe many would balk at.

However, I think there is a relatively unintrusive way to do this: a license key provided at donation. The "key" would not enable any features, it would just silence ads for some period of time, encoded within the license key. This would require I think two changes: (1) how donations are taken, introducing a step that returns a license key; and (2) adding the silencing feature to the extension given this key/token. I suggest a reasonable approach would be to silence for 6 or 12 months, after which we would (perhaps should) be re-encouraged to donate.

Just my opinion. I do appreciate the extension. Thanks!

[SKelem]

I donated! I can't imagine how much work it is to keep up with a constantly-changing interface! My TB is now at 128, only 10 days after Klaus' request for support on 115!

[oschulz]

Thanks you so much for doing this @opto ! I'm with @SKelem .

[r2evans]

...only 10 days after Klaus' request for support on 115!

I like your enthusiasm! Minor point though, "10 days" plus a year, this issue started in 2023 :-)

And I agree, "how much work" is easily underestimated and undervalued. Thanks opto!

[opto]

many many thanks for all your support.

And a deep sigh: I started testing in TB 128 a few days ago: Thunderbird has changed its module system from jsm to ES6 modules, so that needs to be adapted, registering the "factory" (that is what does the autocomplete) stopped working, and since some time, there are timing problems on TB startup: several Nostalgy parts are started, which need each other in a well defined order - but it is not well defined (=undefined) in which order TB actually starts them.

So the TB developers keep us addon authors "busy to follow their changes", even without adding new features.

Or even loosing some features: when moving emails in the old system, they were part of the undo system - ctrl-Z would redo the move. Now, we are strongly encouraged to do that in the new webextension system. That works, with better reliability than the current status of the old legacy move (which, for example, sometimes fails or looses tags on emails). But ... the new system is no longer connected to undo. So if I mistype the folder, the emails go there, and I hopefully remember the mistyped folder name to move them back (earlier, ctrl-Z did that).

Well, we try to keep up, and it will move forward to TB 128 sometime next - I am working on it, and we have some time until TB will be officially updated from 115 to 128.

thanks,

Klaus

[r2evans]

Especially given the woes with upstream TB changes (each big milestone breaks many things, often without stated reason or benefit), I wonder if it would be fruitful for @opto to talk with Jörg Knobloch, notably the Betterbird fork of Thunderbird.

Quick history: Jörg was the first employee of TB and its former maintainer. The rationale for his departure and the fork are too long for this comment (see for example https://davescomputertips.com/betterbird-a-better-thunderbird/), but long-story-short the BB fork resolves many long-standing bugs, adds many long-standing features, all with patches made available to TB. I've been using it for most of the year, it is 100% compatible with TB (including with this addon) and is more stable in my opinion.

I don't suggest "dropping TB" is a viable option, just that there might be some insight and/or other form of help asking there.

Thank you @opto!

[ChristianNext]

Many many tks for your great work! Your app has much great functionality that should be part of TB. Are there any plans? I have just donated.

we have some time until TB will be officially updated from 115 to 128. My Ubuntu snap has just updated me to 128, and warns that reverting to the previous version may not work...

[hbarel]

I really cannot understand Thunderbird. I donated to them, because I agree with their cause, but I think they're threading water. They seem to spend a lot of energy on refactoring and tweaking the UI while IIRC Thunderbird has not introduced a single new meaningful feature in years, and there are tons that could be added. Instead, they repeatedly break compatibility with add-ons which are the only source of useful functionality tweaks that keeps Thunderbird afloat in the first place. I am surprised the Thunderbird team did not bother to introduce easier keyboard-based message filing with some heuristics into its core, instead of, e.g., shining the "Card view" -- a feature that was created for mobile phones with portrait screens and makes no sense in PCs with landscape screens, or instead of working on an Android client, where there are plenty good and established alternatives that Thunderbird is not likely to ever be better than. Nostalgy should not be an add-on. It should be part of TB, with its guaranteed support and a future-friendly license. Problem is -- it isn't... :-(

[Olifair]

Just to update on Klaus comment from two weeks ago : " we have some time until TB will be officially updated from 115 to 128." I just updated TB to 115.13.0 (update channel ESR) and now TB suggests updating to 128.0.1esr

Well, I'm not in a hurry to update :-)

Is there anybody who has tested Nostalgy-xpi and 128 ?

Cheers

Oliver

many many thanks for all your support.

And a deep sigh: I started testing in TB 128 a few days ago: Thunderbird has changed its module system from jsm to ES6 modules, so that needs to be adapted, registering the "factory" (that is what does the autocomplete) stopped working, and since some time, there are timing problems on TB startup: several Nostalgy parts are started, which need each other in a well defined order - but it is not well defined (=undefined) in which order TB actually starts them.

So the TB developers keep us addon authors "busy to follow their changes", even without adding new features.

Or even loosing some features: when moving emails in the old system, they were part of the undo system - ctrl-Z would redo the move. Now, we are strongly encouraged to do that in the new webextension system. That works, with better reliability than the current status of the old legacy move (which, for example, sometimes fails or looses tags on emails). But ... the new system is no longer connected to undo. So if I mistype the folder, the emails go there, and I hopefully remember the mistyped folder name to move them back (earlier, ctrl-Z did that).

Well, we try to keep up, and it will move forward to TB 128 sometime next - I am working on it, and we have some time until TB will be officially updated from 115 to 128.

thanks,

Klaus

[sanjay]

Apparently my install auto-updated a day or two ago to 128 and now a few extensions, including this one, are broken. So any time frame on when we might wee a fix? My whole workflow has gone down in flames.

[marcg1]

Apparently my install auto-updated a day or two ago to 128 and now a few extensions, including this one, are broken. So any time frame on when we might wee a fix? My whole workflow has gotten gone down in flames.

@sanjay , I successfully rolled back to 115 by doing the following (from here) .

• Quit TB 128
• remove (or rename) the compatibility.ini file in the TB profile directory
• Install 115 from here

I disabled automatic updates under TB Tools>Settings>General afterwards. I thought I had already done that, but apparently not.

@opto thanks for your continued support of Nostalgy++! TB would be much less useful without it.

[cjholly]

Not knowing where a user forum is or if there is one, I will misuse this to ask if it is time to upgrade TB to 115 or just stick with 102 for awhile longer. My main reason for delay has been nostalgy++. Life is crazy for me, and I did not want to deal with the things that TB changed to make opto (talk about crazy life!) and the rest of us miserable. So 115? "Is it safe?" (said Olivier to Hoffman)

[RobertKorteweg]

Thank you for all the effort @opto , just updated to 128, hope you get it to work with this version! Don. in your pp.