Email Direct from PDF Reader

[BarryHavenga]

I am a protagonist of bringing Linux into the computer operating system mainstream and in order to do this I believe that the OS and apps have to at least deliver on the needs of the average user.

One thing that I find extremely frustrating that no open source PDF reader I can find has the feature of being able to select an email client and mail directly from the app.

You can do it from Adobe Viewer but the software is out of date and is not going to be updated for Linux and the software itself has multiple issues of its own such as inability to print sometimes, display of first page only.........all infuriating.

There appear to be some philosophical issues with some devs about providing this facility (example Okular) who then make the throwaway statement that:

1) One may simply a) Open the PDF to look at it b) when you are satisfied save the file to a known directory) c) close the app d) Open the email client of choice e) type the email f) find the saved pdf and attach and g) send;
2) The functionality can be created by a few deft strokes on command line.

The problem is that :

1) Users want the functional shortcut and after all the software is supposed to be user oriented;
2) The average user is relatively unversed with anything but the very basics of the OS so are practically incapable of self implementation.

This being said is there anyone who can give me some detailed advice on how to achieve the functionality I require?

My PDF viewer of choice would probably be Okular and I would like to email the PDF open at the time via a Thunderbird client.

I am certainly not a dev but am relatively comfortable in command line and text editors and generally have a fair idea around the OS.

Regards

[SteveRiley]

Not exactly what you want, but Dolphin can do this:



Right click the file, choose Actions -> Send as email attachment.

[BarryHavenga]

Thanks. I know except that now there is a bug with the default app selection so the "print with" goes to kmail instead of my preference: Thunderbird. This is still 2 or 3 steps more than I want though!

[giorgostsi]

Konqueror > open your file in new tab (or in new window) to view in embedded okular with all the bells and whistles, and Actions>Send to Thunderbird













Same for remote files, although I can get it to work only with kmail. TB accepts the file only as Subject. But I could just email the link, right?

[BarryHavenga]

Many thanks.

That what I want. I'll give it a try.

[Teunis]

OT:

I am curious now, are there really people that find this method easier than what Steve showed in Dolphin?
Because I find it very confusing to insert mail functions into a viewer, the file manager is the place I'd expect it...

Or is this specific for environments where documents are accessed via a browser instead of a file manager?

[SteveRiley]

Or is this specific for environments where documents are accessed via a browser instead of a file manager?

Knoqueror is a file manager and web browser combined. It hasn't received much love for a while, though -- it just seems to keep coming along for the ride with the rest of KDE.

I suspect Dolphin's Send as email attachment action relies on some MIME type or other default action for email messages. I don't have Thunderbird installed here so I can't try to recreate the OP's situation.

[giorgostsi]

I suspect Dolphin's Send as email attachment action relies on some MIME type or other default action for email messages. I don't have Thunderbird installed here so I can't try to recreate the OP's situation.

Send to Thunderbird works for me from dolphin also. You just need to have installed and activated the appropriate service menu. http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php...?content=19328

The problem with TB that the OP is experiencing is caused by a bug in thunderbird that does not accept filenames with whitespaces, so the service menu executable needs to be worded especially for TB.

Compare the Portland Project executable to attach a file to the default email client from the file manager

xdg-email --utf8 $(for file in %F;do echo "--attach $file";done)

with the one specially for TB

thunderbird -compose `echo attachment=\'file://%F\' | sed 's/ \//,file:\/\/\//g'`

[weha]

More importantly, when will Okular have XFA support so that I can use it to open pdf's with XFA forms. Very important.

****************************

This one has always worked for me (14.04) - I think I installed it via Dolphin 'Get New Services'

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
Actions=attachToEmail
Encoding=UTF-8
ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin,all/allfiles
ExcludeServiceTypes=application/x-iso,kdedevice/*,inode/directory

[Desktop Action attachToEmail]
Exec=thunderbird -compose "attachment='file:///$(echo %F | sed 's/\\ \\//,file:\\/\\//g')'"
# For Mandriva 2011:  Exec=thunderbird -compose "attachment='$(echo %F | sed 's/\\ \\//,\\/\\//g')'"
Name=Attach to Thunderbird Mail
Name[it]=Invia E-mail con Thunderbird
Name[es]=Enviar adjunto con Thunderbird
Name[de]=Verschicken als Anhang mit Thunderbird
Name[pt]=Anexar ao Thunderbird E-mail
Name[pt_BR]=Enviar arquivo(s) como anexo(s)
Name[fr]=Envoyer avec Thunderbird
Name[nl]=Voeg toe als bijlage aan Thunderbird
Name[pl]=Wyślij jako załącznik Thunderbirda
Name[ru]=Отправить с помощью Thunderbird
Name[cz]=Odeslat jako přílohu Thunderbirdem
Icon=/usr/lib/thunderbird/chrome/icons/default/default16.png
# For 32 bit systems use: Icon=/usr/lib/thunderbird/chrome/icons/default/default16.png