Support Thunderbird 60.0 & 68.0

[nohamelin]

Add-ons Guide for Thunderbird 57 and beyond

It's a meta bug to track those post-Quantum upstream Firefox changes that affected the add-on compatibility with the next major Thunderbird release (and SeaMonkey, by the way):

Since Thunderbird 60 or older:

• Nightly 59 replaced the two preferences to set the UI language (intl.locale.matchOS and general.useragent.locale) with the single intl.locale.requested (How it works).
• Remove support for nsISupportsString values in nsPrefBranch::{get,set}ComplexValue().
• Other minor required changes.

Waiting by a fix by the Thunderbird team:

• Deal with the fallout of bug 1413413 [Remove support for extensions having their own prefs file]
  

Since Thunderbird 68

• All the conversion to the Web-Extensions framework required to minimally support Tb68, needed to implement by all add-ons expecting to run in Tb68
• ??

[ovari]

Perhaps some items here can help:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1500731

Language packs can always be download and installed from here:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/60.2.1/linux-x86_64/xpi/hu.xpi
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/60.2.1/linux-x86_64/xpi/

Config Editor set "intl.locale.requested". If you dislike touching prefs directly, you can also open a platform console and type Services.locale.setRequestedLocales(["hu", "en-US"]); which does the same plus validates the input.

[nohamelin]

Development will be resumed: let's hope to have a working build for the next Thunderbird 68.0 before it hits the release channel...

[ovari]

Should support for v60.0 be dropped as there are big changes between v60.0 and 68.0?

[nohamelin]

The priority is 68.0, next is 60.0: it's possible that Thunderbird 68 will not be good for some people (including myself) and they will decide to postpone the upgrade for a time. But I have not evaluated yet how big are the changes between both versions, so I can't say for sure.

[Nokia808]

@nohamelin
Hi. Thank you for re-establishment of development for this very needed add-on.
Can I ask: how long approximately remaining to fix this issue ?

[ovari]

@ryanleesipes @cleidigh could you please help enable this add-on for Thunderbird 68 to be available on ATN?

This add-on can help @jotasprout, @newton181 et al. with updating screenshots for the Thunderbird website thunderbird/thunderbird-website#36

This add-on is very useful as when it was available for the supported Thunderbird, is had a lot of users.

Thank you

[ovari]

How do I change Thunderbird's locale so that I can test a localization of my add-on?
https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/addons/T93d42648aa43151e

[nohamelin]

Development will be resumed: let's hope to have a working build for the next Thunderbird 68.0 before it hits the release channel...

Well, Tb68 hits the release channel a good time ago but sadly I, again, hardly had time to work on it, and it's very unlikely that I will have it in the near future. I really wanted to keep the development for Thunderbird while the latter still support in some way XUL add-ons, but it's safe to treat this project (along with all my XUL add-on development work) in practice as dead.

If somebody want to develop a new add-on for it I can provide at least some guidance. I will update the README and some other related pages in the following days.

[cleidigh]

@nohamelin
That's unfortunate this a nice useful extension!
If you are okay with it, I would like to flag this in the extension reports perhaps looking for an adopter.
If we can get an adopter would you be okay with keeping the ID and adding a new author?
Also what would you prefer concerning the repository.
I am trying to improve the process for hooking up new developers with old extensions.
Cheers
@cleidigh

[nohamelin]

If you are okay with it, I would like to flag this in the extension reports perhaps looking for an adopter.

Go ahead.

If we can get an adopter would you be okay with keeping the ID and adding a new author?

It's possible but I'm not very open to the idea, as I really don't want to run into a sort of situation where, by example, a new author managing this add-on decides to put ads or any other ugly monetization system. Quick Locale Switcher fell on it, sort of, many years ago. I would prefer seeing independent alternatives being published and leaving this add-on archived for people using old Tb releases, but well, let's see first what comes up.

[cleidigh]

@nohamelin
okay, so you would rather somebody does not fork your code? You prefer someone else start something from scratch? I just want to make sure so I do not misrepresent your desires.

[nohamelin]

@cleidigh
I don't have anything against forks: they are welcome, the MPL license is for that, while it ends being published in ATN with a new ID and name (though something as SimpleLocaleSwitcher2 is perfectly fine).