[kde-linux] Thunderbird can't respond to hyperlink

[Kevin Krammer]

On Wednesday, 2010-03-17, James Tyrer wrote:
> Duncan wrote:
> > FrankK posted on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:37:21 -0700 as excerpted:
> >> If you're still with me here, fresh openSuse 11.2, DVD Firefox 3.0.
> >> something and DVD kde 4.3. T-bird came in a tarball from Mozilla.
> >>
> >> T-bird Error Console writes an error related to load.URL when a
> >> hyperlink is clicked. Firefox is my default browser and T-bird is my
> >> default email according to Personal Settings.
> >>
> >> Mozilla thinks this is an OS problem.
> >
> > That sounds like a library ABI mismatch to me, so yes, an OS problem, or
> > more accurately, a mismatch between the library the T-bird binaries were
> > compiled against, and what the OS actually offers.  The problem could be
> > either the version of the library available vs. expected, or the compiler
> > and settings used, library vs. application trying to load it.
> >
> > If that's correct, probably the easiest way to fix it would be to grab
> > the version supplied by your distribution, OpenSuSE, instead of using an
> > independently (Mozilla) compiled binary.  One of the things distributions
> > /do/, as in, that's their purpose and that's what creating a distribution
> > entails, technically, is ensure that everything they supply for a
> > particular version matches up.  That is, everything's compiled with the
> > same version of gcc, against the same set of standard libraries, etc, so
> > not only the API (application programming interface, source
> > compatibility) but the ABI (application binary interface, binary
> > compatibility) as well, all matches.
> >
> > Another alternative would be to grab the sources and compile it yourself,
> > but that has some complications on most binary based distributions since
> > they often split library headers and other /development/ related files
> > into their own packages separate from the binaries, so you'll likely need
> > to install a bunch of extra development packages in ordered to get it to
> > work.  Still, it's a reasonable alternative, if a bit more work,
> > particularly if you can't find a properly compatible binary package.
> >
> > A third alternative, in theory, would be to recompile the libraries to
> > match the T-Bird binaries, but that's likely to break other programs that
> > depend on them, so it's not such a good idea in practice.
> >
> > But I don't use T-Bird myself and I run Gentoo, not OpenSuSE, so could
> > well be wrong.  It just sounds enough like an ABI issue (which are
> > reasonably common on Gentoo as it's all build-from-source and constantly
> > updated, so new versions of packages break ABIs and even APIs all the
> > time, thus Gentoo has special tools to fix the problem) to me, that it
> > was worth the reply, in the hope that it'll help.
> 
> I find that KDE (probably KWin) screws up URLs taken from Thunderbird.
> This may be GTK vs Qt/KDE but it does appear to be a KDE issue.

I am pretty sure that KWin has no influence on how applications handle their 
internal data.

The question is what happens exactly.
I take it that when an http URL is clicked in a mail displayed by Thunderbird, 
something generates an error, but we do not yet know whether this error is in 
a message box or written to a log/commandline.
And if it is a message box, does it come from Thunderbird or KDE?

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
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