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Frederick Zhang edited this page Jul 15, 2022 · 12 revisions

Installation

Installing the MailExtension

External Editor Revived is available from https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-GB/thunderbird/addon/external-editor-revived/.

Alternatively you can find the latest releases at Releases (it won't auto-update if you download here).

Download the external-editor-revived-vX.Y.Z.xpi file and in Thunderbird, navigate to Add-ons and Themes -> Extensions, click on the gear icon in the top-right corner, then choose Install Add-on From File.

Installing the Native Messaging Host

Download macos-latest-native-messaging-host-vX.Y.Z.zip from Releases.

unzip ./macos-latest-native-messaging-host-vX.Y.Z.zip
xattr -c ./external-editor-revived
chmod +x ./external-editor-revived

Execute the binary and you'll see something like:

Please create 'external_editor_revived.json' manifest file with the JSON below.
Consult https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebExtensions/Native_Messaging for its location.
Under macOS this is usually ~/Library/Mozilla/NativeMessagingHosts/external_editor_revived.json.

{
  "name": "external_editor_revived",
  "description": "Edit emails in external editors such as Vim",
  "path": "/path/to/external-editor-revived",
  "type": "stdio",
  "allowed_extensions": [
    "external-editor-revived@tsundere.moe"
  ]
}

It's usually $HOME/Library/Mozilla/NativeMessagingHosts/external_editor_revived.json so you can also do:

mkdir -p "$HOME/Library/Mozilla/NativeMessagingHosts"
./external-editor-revived | tee "$HOME/Library/Mozilla/NativeMessagingHosts/external_editor_revived.json"

Configuration

External Editor Revived must be configured first, even if you'd like to use the default settings.

In Thunderbird, navigate to Add-ons and Themes -> Extensions, click on the wrench button of External Editor Revived, select your favourite editor and terminal then click on Apply.

Under macOS some terminals are quite tricky to invoke from command lines. If you'd like to use a TUI-based editor, I suggest you install Kitty or Alacritty from Homebrew. GUI-based editors such as Neovide should also work without too much hassle.

Alternatively you can also select Custom in the Editor drop-down menu and configure everything yourself. Note /path/to/temp.eml in template will be directly replaced by actual temporary file path so you must keep it intact.

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