Allows to see what mail messages are mentioned in your notes.
Mostly restored the custom column feature for Thunderbird-115.10 and newer. Ability to add custom column was lost during Thunderbird GUI redesign and it took time to enable it again. I have not figured out if it is possible to mark collapsed thread, and it is regression in comparison to Thunderbird-102.
See https://github.com/maxnikulin/orco/releases/ Already installed add-on should be updated unless it is disabled. [2024-06-25 Tue]
Compatibility: Thunderbird-91 and above with a hole between Thunderbird-111 and Thunderbird-115.10/Thunderbird-124, see Bug #1817682.
Warning. Project development stage: proof of concept. I am not tightly familiar with Thunderbird internals. I hope, it should not break anything in your precious profile data, but I am not completely sure.
Warning. This add-on does not store any data in .msf files
(Thunderbird stores the custom column properties though).
Lack of such optimization may impair performance,
however I have not faced such issue yet.
The extension does not add or modify message headers
to reflect presence in your notes. Depending on your workflow
it may be an advantage or in some cases perhaps a defect.
To see how it works you should have some references to messages
in your notes.
The idea is to use links based on Message-ID header, primary
mid: ones, for background see
RFC 2392 - Content-ID and Message-ID Uniform Resource Locators.
Other link types like news: or mail list archive sites
may require some configuration. Examples of such links:
mid:[email protected]
[[news://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.orgmode/[email protected]][LinkRemark browser extension]]
<https://list.orgmode.org/[email protected]/>.
To access local files Thunderbird extensions should use so called
native messaging helper application (backend).
The recommended tool to extract links from the notes is
bURL https://github.com/maxnikulin/burl.
You may create your own one, but I do not consider API as settled,
so tracking of changes may be a burden.
Configure the helper and specify its ID (name) in the add-on configuration.
Without a configured backend the usage of the extension is quite limited. It may still be helpful to display message headers for Message-ID links in the body of other messages in your mailboxes.
Creating notes linked to messages is not fully supported yet,
so this extension does not use
org-protocol
(info "(org) Protocols").
For a while you may copy mid: links from the mentions page in the popup.
I am going to publish orco add-on to the Thunderbird extension catalog later.
For a while download the latest release as an .xpi file
from the releases section of the GitHub project
https://github.com/maxnikulin/orco/releases/
and use the “install from file” option in the add-on management tab.
Alternatively a repository clone may be loaded as a temporary extension
from the add-on debugging tab. Thunderbird removes column state from
folder views when temporary add-on is not loaded, so it may be inconvenient.
A new toolbar button should appear in the mail tabs.
Right click on message list header should reveal new column
that may be added to the folder view.
Download an archive with bURL from
https://github.com/maxnikulin/burl/releases
and extract the burl_backend executable,
let’s assume that you created ~/.local/share/burl folder for it.
Some details related to configuration may be found in
README file for bURL
and for the
LinkRemark browser extension.
If you have installed bURL earlier for LinkRemark, update it to the latest
release (bURL-0.4 or later is required). As to configuration, it should be enough
to add [email protected] the allowed_extensions array
in the native application manifest. The latter is located in
~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts. If you use news: or nntp: links
in your notes then open the wrapper script specified in the path field
of the manifest and add e.g. -scheme news option to burl_backend command line.
For new users or if you prefer to have separate configuration for LinkRemark
and for orco it is necessary to create a new native messaging application manifest
and a wrapper for burl_backend that serves as its configuration file.
You need to provide paths to burl_backend and the wrapper,
to specify files for link lookup, to choose a name for native messaging helper
(“burl” in the example below). Optionally add more URI schemes like -scheme news
(mid: and https: links are extracted by default)
mkdir -p ~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts
~/.local/share/burl/burl_backend -manifest-firefox ~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/ \
-mozilla-extension [email protected] \
-backend burl \
-wrapper ~/.local/share/burl/burl_wrapper \
-org ~/org/notes.org \
-org ~/org/capture.org
It should create ~/.mozilla/native-messaging-hosts/burl.json and
~/.local/share/burl/burl_wrapper files. You may edit them to adjust
configuration.
Open Thunderbird add-on settings for orco and specify “burl” (or the name you have chosen on the previous step) as native messaging helper. If you have messages linked to the emacs-orgmode mail list archive at https://list.orgmode.org/ than you may add this URL to the list of prefixes.
Click on the add-on toolbar button (browser action) and do “refresh” in the popup. The add-on fetches Message-IDs during Thunderbird startup. There is no option to watch files for changes or setup periodic refresh yet.
To open particular locations in the files where the message is mentioned Emacs server should be running: M-x server-start For background see Server (info "(emacs) Emacs Server").
Link may be hidden inside a folded heading. To open it you may try the following hook:
(defun burl-org-reveal-folded-line ()
(when (derived-mode-p 'org-mode)
(org-reveal)))
(add-hook 'server-visit-hook #'burl-org-reveal-folded-line)Alternatively use C-c C-r that is a binding for M-x org-reveal.
For details see Permission request messages for Thunderbird extensions
WebExtensions API for add-ons does not provide a way to add custom columns, so low level access using experiment APIs is required to implement the feature. The message sounds dangerous for purpose, so you need to audit the code and to decided if you trust the developers. Actually this extension monitors for tabs and windows with message list, adds column and response to requests what should be displayed for particular messages and threads by querying content of the Message-ID header.
Other permissions are hidden behind the most important one.
It is actual way to make requests related to file content or to open particular location in Emacs. Explicit configuration is required to allow native messaging helper, but it is essential as well.
It is used to obtain list of selected or displayed messages in response to browser action click, shortcut, context menu and obtain message headers. Otherwise the extension would have rather limited ability to check mentions in your notes.
Compose message window is a rather specific instance, so messagesRead
permission suitable for message display or 3 pane tabs is not enough
to get headers of the message while it is composed.
Notice that the extension does not use
“Send composed email messages on your behalf” (compose.send)
or compose.save. permissions.
These permissions are skipped in the add-on manager. They are necessary to get access for creation of menu entry and to save extension configuration accordingly.
The copy button on the log page of the popup puts to clipboard more details than it is shown in the popup.
Check Thunderbird console Ctrl+Shift+J for errors, open add-on debugging tab
and click on “Inspect” link to get access to developers tools for the extension
and switch to console to see if some problem is reported there.
For native messaging backend problems see the related section in Mozilla developer guide
orco is published under the GNU GPLv3 license or any later version, see LICENSE.txt.
