TB 67.0 is incompatible with most legacy add-ons, including BiDi Mail UI which, however old and imperfect, enables the user to write from right to left. This means that writers of e-mail messages in Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and other languages will no longer be able to use TB. Is this what the current developers of TB want?
Restoring BiDi functionality is primarily in the hands of the author of the add-on, no?
As for version 67 it can be expected that many addons are not working there, given
- the many changes in Thunderbird leading up to version 68, not just in the add-on environment
- the add-on environment is still very much under development
- that most add-on authors do not update their add-ons until after the major release or sometimes shortly before - which means version 68, not 67.
- there is still much to document and communicate
We ultimately did a fair job with version 60**, but it took too long for various reasons - mostly because the add-on community was in some disarray, and we did not have staff orgnanized to properly support the community. But https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/bidi-mail-ui/ did get updated, and given that the version 68 effort is much more organized I would expect that ultimately the add-on author (who is quite vocal and active in the add-on community) will have similar success with version 68.
** At the end of 2018, 88 of the top 100 most used add-ons were working for version 60. There was considerable effort within the entire developer community to assist add-on developers with version 60. That add-on community is much more organized today.
Restoring BiDi functionality is primarily in the hands of the author of the add-on, no?
If you ask me - nope. It is in the hands of the Firefox people, who should not have introduced breaking changes without making sure that Thunderbird, and the BiDi add-on, which depends on them, are ready for the transition.
And this is doubly true since I’m just a volunteer and they are a funded organization.
Having said that - it’s not the TB developers’ fault. And - I’ll try to find time to work on this in the coming month.