Re: Email full html with images
On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 12:20:28AM +, Alex McLintock wrote: I can handle the sort of email where it says Someone has sent you an electronic card, you can view it at this URL. but what if I want to include the whole graphic in html email. Is there a standard CPAN module for that? (I can send attachments - but am not sure I understand how images are used in html email). HTML mail is bad and wrong, from what I remember of email standards. I know some MUA's can read and send HTML mail, but many cannot (mine for example) and many people automatically delete HTML mail - I even used to do that in Outlook which *could* do HTML mail because it was 99% spam. It would be better to send people a url to a web page, IMHO... -- Natalie S. Ford . [EMAIL PROTECTED] . http://www.natalie.ourshack.org
Re: Email full html with images
Natalie S. Ford wrote: HTML mail is bad and wrong, from what I remember of email standards. I know some MUA's can read and send HTML mail, but many cannot (mine for example) and many people automatically delete HTML mail - I even used to do that in Outlook which *could* do HTML mail because it was 99% spam. It would be better to send people a url to a web page, IMHO... I think HTML mail has its place. Linking to a URL is often inconvenient (think dialup users) and is prone to breaking due to wordwrap, cut'n'paste errors etc[1]. I don't see anything wrong with it, provided that you asked for it, and an alternative is readily available. -Dom [1] Not everybody knows about services like makeashorterlink.com. -- | Semantico: creators of major online resources | | URL: http://www.semantico.com/ | | Tel: +44 (1273) 72 | | Address: 33 Bond St., Brighton, Sussex, BN1 1RD, UK. |
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 02:26:22PM +, Dominic Mitchell wrote: I don't see anything wrong with it, provided that you asked for it, and an alternative is readily available. Yeah, but I have never asked for it and it still arrives... ;-) -- Natalie S. Ford . [EMAIL PROTECTED] . http://www.natalie.ourshack.org
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 02:26:22PM +, Dominic Mitchell wrote: I think HTML mail has its place. Linking to a URL is often inconvenient (think dialup users) Yes, think dialup users. Who get to download your masterpiece whether they want it or not, rather than at a time of their choosing. Roger
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu 05 Dec 2002, Natalie S. Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I know some MUA's can read and send HTML mail, but many cannot (mine for example) [...] You seem to be using mutt. Putting this in ~/.mailcap might help: text/html; lynx -force_html -dump %s|less Paul Makepeace posted a more involved solution a few months ago: http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20021014/014513.html Kake
Re: Email full html with images
Roger Burton West wrote: On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 02:26:22PM +, Dominic Mitchell wrote: I think HTML mail has its place. Linking to a URL is often inconvenient (think dialup users) Yes, think dialup users. Who get to download your masterpiece whether they want it or not, rather than at a time of their choosing. Well, Jakob Nielsen has this to say on the subject: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/2820.html Some of you will doubtless respond by doing the reverse (: -- Tim Sweetman A L Digital It's way too broke to fix --- Placebo
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Natalie S. Ford wrote: HTML mail is bad and wrong, from what I remember of email standards. I know some MUA's can read and send HTML mail, Or some people (like me) have HTML mail disabled. Sure, PINE can read html mail and have a go at rendering it but I'm not going to...I have it turned off. Send me a link and I'll probably click on it. Go figure. I highly recommend people look at the various options for including alternative text (normally a link to a web page) both as a multipart/alternative and in the preamble sections. This allows people (who admittedly suffered the large download already) to choose the correct section of the web page to display best suited to their preferences. Pay attention to the option of sending a *very* short message in the preamble - certain very primitive non-mime email clients will often display this if they can't work out how to deal any further. Mark. -- Mark Fowler http://www.twoshortplanks.com/ The 2002 Perl Advent Calendar [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.perladvent.org/2002/ a different perl module featured every day
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 03:47:00PM +, Mark Fowler wrote: Or some people (like me) have HTML mail disabled. Sure, PINE can read html mail and have a go at rendering it but I'm not going to...I have it turned off. Send me a link and I'll probably click on it. Go figure. s/PINE/mutt/ and AOL; -- Lusercop.net - LARTing Lusers everywhere since 2002
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 01:32:10PM +, Natalie S. Ford wrote: On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 12:20:28AM +, Alex McLintock wrote: I can handle the sort of email where it says Someone has sent you an electronic card, you can view it at this URL. but what if I want to include the whole graphic in html email. Is there a standard CPAN module for that? (I can send attachments - but am not sure I understand how images are used in html email). HTML mail is bad and wrong, from what I remember of email standards. I know some MUA's can read and send HTML mail, but many cannot (mine for example) It's a perfectly valid standard, and in practice virtually every mail client can read it now. Yours can too in fact with a little fiddling. The issue of who *wants* to read HTML is a different matter, of course :-) Here's some real world info on this collected by ClickZ - eye-opening article, http://www.clickz.com/em_mkt/infra/article.php/1428551 The some people can't read it argument is dead now. Besides, with multipart/alternative you can provide a text version as well. Whatever you do, I think the newsletter should be opt-in offer a choice, HTML, plain text or both. I don't really buy the dial-up argument. It's possibly to make decent images with a low foot print and good HTML isn't substantially bigger than text anyway, with stylesheets. Anyone on dial-up is unlikely to be sitting there staring at te download bar, they'll be doing soething else so download time isn't a big waste of their day. To pre-empt the well people use crappy bloaty HTML editors - that's a specious argument; people can write crappy copy, not line-wrap it properly, etc, etc as well. Text only is great for conversations. HTML mail serves a purpose for its particular applications: produce pleasant looking output with colors and images, which aids comprehension and can highlight more important data quickly. I don't need to point this out, psychologists have known this for years. It's how humans work. Just because email started out as text doesn't mean it has to stay shackled to that medium for eternity. Choices are good. Paul, stirring again :) -- Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/ If the bed bugs bite, then why does one fall down, but throw-up. -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 03:19:32PM +, Kate L Pugh wrote: On Thu 05 Dec 2002, Natalie S. Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Paul Makepeace posted a more involved solution a few months ago: http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20021014/014513.html That's the solution I currently use; however, it's not much use to the majority of people who - I reckon - don't read their mail in a terminal session It's only because I *do* read my mail this way that I can cope with unsolicited HTML mail, because I'm using dialup - I agree fully with Roger's earlier comment. If you want to do shiny graphical things, why not do them on the Web, where they're meant to be, rather than a kludgy hack like HTML mail that pisses a lot of people off? Also a swift Google finds me: http://www.cse.iitb.ernet.in/~sharat/misc/whyNotHTMLemail.html -- rare aliment
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 03:19:32PM +, Kate L Pugh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Thu 05 Dec 2002, Natalie S. Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I know some MUA's can read and send HTML mail, but many cannot (mine for example) [...] You seem to be using mutt. Putting this in ~/.mailcap might help: text/html; lynx -force_html -dump %s|less I have something pretty similar in my /etc/mailcap[1]. But, to be honest, it's a complete waste of time. In all the time I've been receiving email I don't think I've had more than three pure HTML emails that haven't been spam. Dave... [1] The default configuration for RH now seems to be to configure mutt to display HTML email using mozilla. We fixed that pretty damn quickly and went back to lynx :) -- Drugs are just bad m'kay
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 16:18, Earle Martin wrote: On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 03:19:32PM +, Kate L Pugh wrote: On Thu 05 Dec 2002, Natalie S. Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Paul Makepeace posted a more involved solution a few months ago: http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20021014/014513.html That's the solution I currently use; however, it's not much use to the majority of people who - I reckon - don't read their mail in a terminal session It's only because I *do* read my mail this way that I can cope with unsolicited HTML mail, because I'm using dialup - I agree fully with Roger's earlier comment. If you want to do shiny graphical things, why not do them on the Web, where they're meant to be, rather than a kludgy hack like HTML mail that pisses a lot of people off? That last line should read: like HTML mail that pisses a lot of people LIKE US off? And therein lies the rub: frankly *we* are not most people. Most people, that use email, are actually using HTML all the time; because most people use Outlook or some similarly functioned MUA on Windows. The default setting for most mail input on most MUAs is HTML. This is therefore what most people use - whether *we* like it or not. I agree, it pisses people *like* *us* off (including me [esp. when they use such _tiny_ fonts]). But, thankfully, I am not most people. Please take my hatred of Windows, Outlook et al as read (flames not required) but, at the same time, please don't underestimate their prevalence. Dirk -- Please Note: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 04:35:32PM +, Dirk Koopman said: The default setting for most mail input on most MUAs is HTML. This is therefore what most people use - whether *we* like it or not. Is this because they actually want it or they don't know any better? That's not a troll - I'm painfully aware that I am not an 'average user' and am genuinely interested. and enlightening conversation occurred with my Mum earlier this month when I asked her to trim her posts and not jeopardy/top quote. Apart from the difficulties that Outlook puts in here way she did try it for my sake but admitted that she actually likes it because it means she dioesn't have to archive her mail and can read all mails from previously in the thread in the same mail and also bring new people in the thread up to speed quickly. I could almost see her point.
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, 2002-12-05 at 17:24, Simon Wistow wrote: On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 04:35:32PM +, Dirk Koopman said: The default setting for most mail input on most MUAs is HTML. This is therefore what most people use - whether *we* like it or not. Is this because they actually want it or they don't know any better? That's not a troll - I'm painfully aware that I am not an 'average user' and am genuinely interested. My limited experience with this is that, if you ask, they prefer it. Like, I think, may be too strong a word. But it is also true that, unless you ask, they simply stick with defaults. This seems to still cover most people. What I would say, being an evo/sylpheed user, if you do create HTML mail, please stick *everything* in that is relevant (all the necessary images, css and stuff). It gets very annoying getting HTML email with half of it missing - for those of us that don't allow off-site references from HTML email. I believe this is an issue for some of the more enlightened Windows/Outlook shops as well. Dirk -- Please Note: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 03:19:32PM +, Kate L Pugh wrote: On Thu 05 Dec 2002, Natalie S. Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I know some MUA's can read and send HTML mail, but many cannot (mine for example) [...] You seem to be using mutt. Putting this in ~/.mailcap might help: text/html; lynx -force_html -dump %s|less Paul Makepeace posted a more involved solution a few months ago: http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20021014/014513.html OK. I stand corrected. It can. I still won't be reading HTML mails. Sorry if this is inconvenient to anyone, but I still feel that email should be text only... Just my 2 cents... -- Natalie S. Ford . [EMAIL PROTECTED] . http://www.natalie.ourshack.org
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 04:18:07PM +, Earle Martin wrote: That's the solution I currently use; however, it's not much use to the majority of people who - I reckon - don't read their mail in a terminal session It's only because I *do* read my mail this way that I can cope with unsolicited HTML mail, because I'm using dialup - I agree fully with Roger's earlier comment. If you want to do shiny graphical things, why not do them on the Web, where they're meant to be, rather than a kludgy hack like HTML mail that pisses a lot of people off? Also a swift Google finds me: http://www.cse.iitb.ernet.in/~sharat/misc/whyNotHTMLemail.html Yeah. I use mutt in screen on a colo box via isdn on my iBook in Terminal and so won't be looking at *anything* graphical in mutt and so I am happier copy and pasting a url to my iBook and viewing it in a browser there... -- Natalie S. Ford . [EMAIL PROTECTED] . http://www.natalie.ourshack.org
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 04:18:07PM +, Earle Martin wrote: http://www.cse.iitb.ernet.in/~sharat/misc/whyNotHTMLemail.html I agree and have bookmarked that for future reference... -- Natalie S. Ford . [EMAIL PROTECTED] . http://www.natalie.ourshack.org
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 08:30:56PM +, Natalie S. Ford wrote: On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 04:18:07PM +, Earle Martin wrote: http://www.cse.iitb.ernet.in/~sharat/misc/whyNotHTMLemail.html I agree and have bookmarked that for future reference... Another thought (and an apology for many small emails) is that HTML mail is MUCH harder to read if you are at all visually impaired (which I often am)... -- Natalie S. Ford . [EMAIL PROTECTED] . http://www.natalie.ourshack.org
Re: Email full html with images
From: Natalie S. Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] It may be best that the whole email be replaced as a text only version with all of the content and alt texts so that non graphical environments (like mine) can get the gist. In a similar way to how the web browsers for blond people read out the alt texts of images, etc... Sometimes mistypings are very amusing...:) /Robert
Re: Email full html with images
On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 09:15:55PM -, Robert Shiels wrote: Sometimes mistypings are very amusing...:) Yup! ;-) -- Natalie S. Ford . [EMAIL PROTECTED] . http://www.natalie.ourshack.org
Re: Email full html with images
On or about Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 12:20:28AM +, Alex McLintock typed: but what if I want to include the whole graphic in html email. Is there a standard CPAN module for that? (I can send attachments - but am not sure I understand how images are used in html email). In the HTML part, give a filename for the image. That filename should match the filename in the image part. Easy, innit? (I use MIME::Lite.) And perhaps most importantly... What sort of things do I have to check for to reduce the likelyhood of my script being used by spammers? Require a valid email address for the sender - validate it by sending a confirmation code to that address and requiring it to be entered in the site. Then put some sort of rate-limiter (by time or IP address) on it. Roger
Re: Email full html with images
On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 12:20:28AM +, Alex McLintock wrote: I'm thinking of throwing together a christmas card by email system for a friend who designs stuff, including cards. I can handle the sort of email where it says Someone has sent you an electronic card, you can view it at this URL. but what if I want to include the whole graphic in html email. Is there a standard CPAN module for that? (I can send attachments - but am not sure I understand how images are used in html email). I use MIME::Lite for sending out comics in email. Dunno how well it'll play with HTML, or how you refer to the embedded images from the HTML. And perhaps most importantly... What sort of things do I have to check for to reduce the likelyhood of my script being used by spammers? I have to say that I despise this sort of service. I don't particularly care how well-meaning the site is, or who thinks I might be interested in getting a card from them, but AFAIC it is as near as damnit spam. So I guess you can't stop it :-) But if you insist on doing it ... do not allow users to specify any text apart from a maximum of two words* and 30 characters for the names of the recipient and sender; only allow a single message from users at a given IP per hour; only allow a single message to a given email address per hour; and certainly don't let users supply their own images; make it possible for entire domains (eg *@cantrell.org.uk) and specific mail servers (eg plough.barnyard.co.uk, or 195.149.50.61) to be blocked so that when an admin screams at your client they can truthfully promise to stop spamming the users. Feel free to use my server and my domains to get your database started. * - word defined as \b\w+\b or something similar. You might like to ban numbers and punctuation altogether. -- David Cantrell | Member of the Brute Squad | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Liver with fava beans and a nice chianti is less appealing if the donor has cirrhosis -- after Coyu, in soc.history.what-if
Re: Email full html with images
On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 12:20:28AM +, Alex McLintock said:
I can handle the sort of email where it says Someone has sent you an
electronic card, you can view it at this URL.
but what if I want to include the whole graphic in html email. Is there a
standard CPAN module for that? (I can send attachments - but am not sure I
understand how images are used in html email).
From the MIME::Lite perldocs
Send an HTML document... with images included!
$msg = MIME::Lite-new(
To ='[EMAIL PROTECTED]',
Subject ='HTML with in-line images!',
Type='multipart/related'
);
$msg-attach(Type = 'text/html',
Data = qq{ body
Here's imy/i image:
img src=cid:myimage.gif;
/body }
);
$msg-attach(Type = 'image/gif',
Id = 'myimage.gif',
Path = '/path/to/somefile.gif',
);
$msg-send();
Re: Email full html with images
On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, David Cantrell wrote: I use MIME::Lite for sending out comics in email. Dunno how well it'll play with HTML, or how you refer to the embedded images from the HTML. Not that I've used it, but there is the extension to MIME::Lite, MIME::Lite::HTML which seems to do all that hard work for you and reduce all the thinking that you might otherwise have to do. It also has a table of how well it works with different mail clients. http://search.cpan.org/author/ALIAN/MIME-Lite-HTML/HTML.pm Mark. -- Mark Fowler http://www.twoshortplanks.com/ The 2002 Perl Advent Calendar [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.perladvent.org/2002/ a different perl module featured every day
Re: Email full html with images
On Wed, 2002-12-04 at 00:47, Simon Wistow wrote: From the MIME::Lite perldocs Careful, there's a mistake in those docs, the example produces non-RFC-compliant mails that break in most mailers that I tried. I sent a bug report in October but didn't get a response. $msg-attach(Type = 'image/gif', Id = 'myimage.gif', the rest is ok, but this line should read Id = 'myimage.gif', then putting img src=cid:myimage.gif; in the html part will work (or does in all the places I tried so far). alex
Re: Email full html with images
On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 12:38:49AM +, David Cantrell wrote: * - word defined as \b\w+\b or something similar. You might like to ban Are those \b's not redundant? P -- Paul Makepeace ... http://paulm.com/ What is the diameter of Marilyn Monroe's clitoris? Decapitated heads in a field of sunflowers. -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/
