Re: [MlMt] forwarding HTML emails

[Tracy Valleau]

Again, my thanks, Robert. That was indeed the issue. All resolved now.

Tracy
www.valleau.art




On 18 Jan 2018, at 9:27, Tracy Valleau wrote:

Thanks, Robert. Yours is a very good suggestion, and I'll check my 
configs soon!


Thank you.

Tracy
www.valleau.art




On 18 Jan 2018, at 9:00, mailmate-requ...@lists.freron.com wrote:


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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: forwarding HTML emails (Robert Brenstein)
   2. Re: forwarding HTML emails (Verdon Vaillancourt)


--

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 15:25:14 +0100
From: "Robert Brenstein" 
To: "MailMate Users" 
Subject: Re: [MlMt] forwarding HTML emails
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

I have been using MM for one year only but I haven’t seen any real
issues with forwarding HTML mails. If I forward the whole mail, and I 
do
it almost daily, it seem to be quoted intact. I can see that using 
the

preview in composer (composer itself displays only the text).
Occasionally, a forwarded email will become an attachment but I 
suspect
that has to do with how that email was formatted or rather embedded 
on
the way to me. If I select a subset of HTML-formatted email to 
forward,

MM strips the original HTML code and replaces with simple color-coded
quoting layers. It is not always optimal but I understand that it is
virtually impossible to correctly carry on a subset of an
HTML/CSS-formatted email, considering how widely different and not
always correct those are set up. I can turn on markdown mode and bold 
or

italic some texts as needed.

Since you are such a long-time user, I wonder whether you do not have
some settings set that affect the way your instance of MM operates. 
May
be you should carefully review your config file (I use Prefs Editor 
app

for easy viewing).

Robert

On 17 Jan 2018, at 21:21, Tracy Valleau wrote:


This is fundamentally problematic because "just forward them" does
not
 have a well-defined technical meaning other than embedding the 
full

 original message as an attachment.


I was simplifying to express my request clearly.

HTML email is a few headers and HTML content. It is not any more
complex than a web page, basically.

The issue is that when forwarding, MM strips out all the HTML code.
Try viewing the source of an HTML email and you'll see what I mean.

My point is that the original source is IN the email, else I'd not 
see

it all prettified, eh? So it's there.

Why not "just" forward ALL that original source? The head, the 
tables,

the divs, the body... That way the recipient would see what I see.

I can understand not doing it for "political" reasons ("all email
should be text"). What I don't understand is why it isn't an option.
Mail can do it; Outlook can do it; Thunderbird can do it; PostBox 
can

do it... 

As a programmer with over 40 years of experience, I -can- understand
boxing one's self in to a point at which integrating the capability 
is

a huge amount of work. That would be a legitimate reason for not
offering it (albeit unfortunate.)

But from a USER perspective, not being able to "just forward" HTML
email is odd, and from a recipient's standpoint... well in my 4
decades, I've -never- received an email that said "to see the html
version, click on the attachment."

Best wishes, 

Tracy
www.valleau.art

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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 09:33:36 -0500
From: "Verdon Vaillancourt" 
To: "MailMate Users" 
Subject: Re: [MlMt] forwarding HTML emails
Message-ID: <7dfbb770-7f2a-4cef-82b0-b43cf37ff...@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; markup=markdown

Thanks for that tip!

On 18 Jan 2018, at 9:25, Robert Brenstein wrote:


(I use Prefs Editor app for easy viewing).



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Re: [MlMt] forwarding HTML emails

[Bill Cole]

On 17 Jan 2018, at 15:21, Tracy Valleau wrote:

HTML email is a few headers and HTML content. It is not any more 
complex than a web page, basically.


Yes. And to embed a full HTML page in another requires the use of 
features like FRAME or IFRAME, both of which have limited support in 
MUAs for good reasons.


The alternative is what TBird does: put a full-blown WYSIWYG(ish) HTML 
renderer and HTML editor/composer into the MUA, import the original 
HTML, figure out how to tack on a reasonable rendering of headers above 
the original body with your own styling that doesn't collide with the 
original message's styling, construct a visual separator to give the 
user a safe place to add comment above that and if the user decides to 
do any sort of internal edits on the original message, hope that your 
editor/composer can properly parse and restructure whatever the 
editor/composer of the original HTML provided without botching it.


The issue is that when forwarding, MM strips out all the HTML code. 
Try viewing the source of an HTML email and you'll see what I mean.


Looks to me like inline forwarding just forwards the raw HTML of a 
HTML-only message, making it a total wreck. Probably something about my 
settings...


My point is that the original source is IN the email,  else I'd not 
see it all prettified, eh? So it's there.


And MM doesn't actually do the rendering of the HTML. That's all done by 
WebKit.


Why not "just" forward ALL that original source? The head, the tables, 
the divs, the body... That way  the recipient would see what I see.


"Redirect" does just that.

If you want something like what fully HTML-aware MUAs do (i.e. a 
rendered original message including a pretty form of the useful headers, 
a separator, and an area for you to add your commentary) you need a full 
HTML editor/composer. MM has no such thing. It generates de novo HTML by 
way of a Markdown interpreter, it passes along unmodified HTML by 
redirection or attachment of an HTML message, never modifying the HTML.


I can understand not doing it for "political" reasons ("all email 
should be text"). What I don't understand is why it isn't an option. 
Mail can do it; Outlook can do it; Thunderbird can do it; PostBox can 
do it...


As a programmer with over 40 years of experience, I -can- understand 
boxing one's self in to a point at which integrating the capability is 
a huge amount of work. That would be a legitimate reason for not 
offering it (albeit unfortunate.)


My understanding (I hope Benny will correct me if I'm wrong) is that 
adding this to MM would require a lot of work because the HTML 
capabilities MM has are largely outsourced to the OS and the embedded 
Markdown interpreter.


But from a USER perspective, not being able to "just forward" HTML 
email is odd, and from a recipient's standpoint... well in my 4 
decades, I've -never- received an email that said "to see the html 
version, click on the attachment."


That's a recipient MUA issue. Both MM and TBird render attached messages 
inline, as does GMail webmail. Apple Mail shows an attachment, iCloud 
webmail shows no hint of anything unless you download the message (i.e. 
shoddy...) It's been a long time since I've used Outlook, but to the 
best of my recollection it also shows attached emails inline.


My point is that I don't see how this is a serious problem. Different 
MUAs always have rendered and always will render anything more complex 
than plain pure-ASCII text with lines shorter than 64 characters in 
different ways. They've always done "inline" forwarding in variant ways.

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