thunderbird / thunderbird/thunderbird-android

Add support for multipart/digest messages

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type: enhancement
Dominant language
Kotlin
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Expected behavior

In the attached message, which is multipart/digest, there are two parts:

  1. An e-mail (message/rfc822), containing a multipart/mixed message which announces an event. It contains an image and a pdf file, as well as text/plain and text/html parts.
  2. Another e-email, containing a calendar item for the event. This is another multipart/mixed message, containing a calendar item (text/calendar and application/ics, as well as text/plain and text/html parts).

Thunderbird is capable of uaably displaying the message.
K-9 should too.

Both e-mails should be displayed, including their in-line images.

It should be possible to put the event on the calendar - the event is provided in two machine-readable formats, at least one of which should work. text/calendar and application/ics. There are also text/plain and text/html renditions. The browser should not be involved - even if the item can not be put on the calendar, it should be possible to view the HTML version and/or save the .ics file.

Actual behavior

K-9 does not display the (inline) images in the first e-mail. The attached document link is not displayed, although the attachment can be opened.

K-9 shows the second e-mail as an attachment, which opens its text/plain part the in the web browser, not as an e-mail. The calendar item is not accessible.

Steps to reproduce
  1. Introduce the attached file into an imap folder
  2. Open it with k-9
  3. For comparison, open the file with Thunderbird./Lightning

Note: The sample message is dated 15-Mar-19, 11:35
It is an actual message, with a few substitutions to avoid posting personal information. Thunderbird displays the attached (modified) version, but the DKIM signature is broken as a result.

The message is contained in this ZIP file

Environment

K-9 Mail version: 5.600

Android version: 9 PPWS29.69-26-5 (Security patch 1-Feb-2019) on Moto X-4

Account type (IMAP, POP3, WebDAV/Exchange): IMAP

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by downloading the linked Sample-Digest.zip and reproducing the message in K-9 Mail, comparing its handling with Thunderbird. Trace how nested multipart messages, inline images, attachments, and calendar parts are displayed; done means both embedded e-mails and their contents are accessible without opening them in the browser, including viewing or saving the calendar item.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
android, kotlin
Domain
mobile
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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