Copy Citation for Thunderbird
I wanted an easy way to extract message metadata (subject, sender, date, etc.) from Thunderbird. After a lot of fighting with mail interfaces, I produced this.
"Copy Citation" adds a context menu item to Thunderbird's thread pane, which copies the metadata for the selected message(s) to the clipboard.
Download
Copy Citation 0.1 (XPI, 3.4KB) - Supports Thunderbird 2.0.0.*.
To install in Thunderbird, download the XPI file and use the "Install" button in Tools → Add-ons, or simply drag-and-drop the link above to the add-ons window.
Configuration
Currently the format of the citation is set via a hidden pref, extensions.rdmsoft.cite.format. You can get to about:config in Thunderbird from the Options/Preferences dialog's Advanced tab.
The filter string uses replacements of the form {bit} or {bit.filter}. As of version 0.1, the following bits are supported:
- subject
- The subject of the message.
- from
- to
- cc
- to
- The senders and recipients of the message in the form Real Name <address@example.com>. Use filters address or name to show only one, or mailto to make HTML links.
- lines
- size
- Message size, as line count or in bytes respectively. Use {size.fmtsize} to show size in KB/MB.
- date
- Email timestamp, in microseconds since the beginning of the world. Use {date.date} or {date.time} for date in YYYY-MM-DD or time in HH:MM.
- folder
- The message's location in Thunderbird.
- id
- The Message-ID of the original message.
- newsurl
- news: URL to the message. Only applicable to newsgroup messages.
Other filters are lower, upper, btoa, escape, and se (escape for use in HTML/XML).
Known Issues & Todo
- I aim to support Thunderbird trunk and eventually SeaMonkey.
- Non-ASCII senders and subjects should work, but I haven't tested them much. Non-ASCII CC lists almost certainly don't work.
- A preference dialog is planned.
- There's only one date format and one time format. It's the best one, of course, but I should add more.
- The menu item remains enabled when no messages are selected.
- I might add support for multiple citation formats.
- Tabs and newlines can't easily be added to the format string. Workaround for tabs: copy/paste from a text editor.
Rob Marshall