I wish I could use Kmail, but its lack of HTML support won't let me, so I use Thunderbird instead.

For work, I very often need to compose messages with embedded images. Right now, it means having to take snapshots, saving them to disk, open the Thunderbird 'Insert message' dialog, point to the file, click through some fields and accept.

Via Nautilus or Firefox, I can just copy / paste the image or drag and drop it.

Would it be feasible to emulate this behavior in Dolphin and Ksnapshot / Klipper? So that I can point to an existing image on disk and drag it from Dolphin to the mail composer? Or send a capture image from Ksnapshot to the clipboard and paste it directly into the message?

Is this a feasible feature request or would it be technically too complex to do it?

I was able to copy an image using the KSnapShot 'Copy to clipboard' feature and paste it into an OpenOffice.org document, which doesn't use Qt. I was also able to drag an image from Firefox, which provided a URL to Konqueror. Konqueror then successfully used KIO to download the image. I was also able to copy the image in Konqueror and paste it into Firefox.

Since the clipboard is managed by X, the image would be stored in its memory and retrievable by Thunderbird. Therefore the problem is more likely in Thunderbird / Gtk, not correctly handling interaction with Non-GTK applications, with regard to Images.

Wow, that makes sense!

Guess I need to file a TB bug then.

When you file the Thunderbird bug, could you please post a link to the bug here, so that future searchers can track the issue, and its (hopeful) resolution? Thanks in advance

Done: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469105

OK, update.
The bug was picked up immediately and I got a reply: it has been fixed in TB 3.0b1, at least, I dl-ed it, tried it and it worked. Now all I can do is hope for a release pronto....

If you are satisfied with the solution, could you please add a [solved] to the title.
Thanks

Well, it is not so much solved, as the question has been answered

I will put 'resolved'