Adding new content type to Thunderbird

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dotancohen
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Adding new content type to Thunderbird

Post by dotancohen »

On Kubuntu 9.10 with Thunderbird 3.0 (Mozilla build) I cannot add new content types to the Attachments tab. There is no "Add new type" or such button, and right-clicking on everything yielded no such options either.

How to add new content types, specifically PDF?

Thanks.
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Rod Whiteley
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Re: Adding new content type to Thunderbird

Post by Rod Whiteley »

The trick is to open an attachment of that type, choose the application and tell Thunderbird to use it in future. This information is also in the knowledge base: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Actions_for_a ... file_types
Rod
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dotancohen
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Re: Adding new content type to Thunderbird

Post by dotancohen »

Thank you Rod. When I open PDF attachments (double click on the attachment at the bottom on the view pane), I get only the options of Cancel and Save. Clicking Cancel does the obvious, and clicking Save gives me the GTK File Chooser dialogue for save location. I do not get the Open With / Save / Do Automatically dialogue that one gets with most other attachment types.
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Rod Whiteley
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Re: Adding new content type to Thunderbird

Post by Rod Whiteley »

Look in the message source (View – Message Source) to check that the content type of the attachment really is: application/pdf   Thunderbird seems to be treating it as if the sender marked it unknown and possibly harmful (application/octet-stream, for example).
Rod
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dotancohen
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Re: Adding new content type to Thunderbird

Post by dotancohen »

It's not for just a single message, I am referring to all my PDF-containing messages (from several senders, over the course of some years). Here is an example of the message source, a message which leads to the behaviour that I describe above:

--FAB_WWW_MSSG4c0de42ccc434_NEXTPART
Content-Type: application/pdf; name="fab-register-648051.pdf"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="fab-register-648051.pdf"
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Rod Whiteley
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Re: Adding new content type to Thunderbird

Post by Rod Whiteley »

You normally use a single message to set it up, and after that the stored settings apply to all messages. But in your case Thunderbird seems to think application/pdf is an executable, and I do not know why that happens. You might be able to fix it by hacking mimeTypes.rdf.
Rod
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dotancohen
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Re: Adding new content type to Thunderbird

Post by dotancohen »

Thanks, Rod.
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