subject:"Re\: Creating HTML emails with mutt"

On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 23:47:38 +1300
martin f krafft  wrote:

> Regarding the following, written by "John Long" on 2019-10-31 at
> 10:30 Uhr +:
> >1. Commonly done != standard. There are standards for things like
> >MIME, POP3, IMAP etc. I'm not aware of ANSI, ISO, IETF standards
> >that say that HTML email is a thing.  
> 
> Quoting the HTML RFC from 1995: "The Hypertext Markup Language 
> (HTML) is a simple markup language used to create hypertext 
> documents that are platform independent. HTML documents are SGML 
> documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for 
> representing information from a wide range of domains. HTML markup 
> can represent hypertext news, **mail**, documentation, and 
> hypermedia; …"

That's the tail wagging the dog. I'm saying I haven't seen an *email*
RFC that says "HTML may/should be used for email."

But I'm ok with not discussing this anymore, if you are ;)

/jl

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 23:49:37 +1300
martin f krafft  wrote:

> Regarding the following, written by "John Long" on 2019-10-31 at
> 10:17 Uhr +:
> >> The approach Kevin proposed is completely HTML-agnostic and leaves
> >> it up to the user to provide an external tool that provides the
> >> HTML. Mutt then just does the required MIME-handling, which is
> >> clearly within the domain of a MUA.  
> >
> >I thought there was already the capability in mutt to pipe email to 
> >another application?  
> 
> Sure, you can filter your text/plain part through aspell. But you 
> cannot currently create multipart/alternative emails.
> 
> >> There is no GUI requirement in any of this.  
> >
> >I meant to say that HTML email becomes much less useful and in some 
> >cases worthless without a GUI. You can't display pictures or see 
> >advertising links on the console. I have tried to use various
> >console browsers like links and lynx and I'm unable to use them with
> >almost any webpage.  
> 
> So you'll have your client configured to prefer text/plain when 
> given the choice between alternatives. Which mutt already supports.
> 
> Can we please move on?

"I am going to stop participating in this "HTML is good or bad for 
Email" debate, and I'd like to invite you all to consider doing the 
same."

Easier said than done ;)

/jl

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-31 Thread martin f krafft


Regarding the following, written by "John Long" on 2019-10-31 at 10:17 Uhr 
+:
The approach Kevin proposed is completely HTML-agnostic and leaves it 
up to the user to provide an external tool that provides the HTML. 
Mutt then just does the required MIME-handling, which is clearly 
within the domain of a MUA.


I thought there was already the capability in mutt to pipe email to 
another application?


Sure, you can filter your text/plain part through aspell. But you 
cannot currently create multipart/alternative emails.



There is no GUI requirement in any of this.


I meant to say that HTML email becomes much less useful and in some 
cases worthless without a GUI. You can't display pictures or see 
advertising links on the console. I have tried to use various console 
browsers like links and lynx and I'm unable to use them with almost any 
webpage.


So you'll have your client configured to prefer text/plain when 
given the choice between alternatives. Which mutt already supports.


Can we please move on?

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-31 Thread martin f krafft

Regarding the following, written by "John Long" on 2019-10-31 at 10:30 Uhr
+:
1. Commonly done != standard. There are standards for things like MIME,
POP3, IMAP etc. I'm not aware of ANSI, ISO, IETF standards that say
that HTML email is a thing.

Quoting the HTML RFC from 1995: "The Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML) is a simple markup language used to create hypertext
documents that are platform independent. HTML documents are SGML
documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for
representing information from a wide range of domains. HTML markup
can represent hypertext news, **mail**, documentation, and
hypermedia; …"

So yes, HTML was designed pretty much from the start to be used for
mail.

And then "MIME" came along. Which is a standard, and RFC 2854 makes
text/html a standard.

Anyway, none of this is relevant, because:

2. Mutt hasn't had HTML support

… and won't get HTML support. We're working on the ability to create
multipart/alternative containers.

I am going to stop participating in this "HTML is good or bad for
Email" debate, and I'd like to invite you all to consider doing the
same.

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 16:29:31 -0500
Derek Martin  wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:29:31AM +, John Long wrote:
> > > I don’t think this is about right and wrong, and not only because
> > > there is no objectivity. multipart/alternative is an accepted
> > > standard, and so is HTML. You might not like how things have
> > > developed, and neither do I, but that doesn’t make it wrong.  
> > 
> > HTML is for web pages. It is wrong for email, yes.  
> 
> This is just not a supportable position based on anything logical or
> evicence-based.  HTML in e-mail has been a de-facto standard for about
> as long as most people have been using e-mail (admittedly, much less
> true for the folks on this list).  It has almost universal adoption of
> native support in almost every e-mail client of note.  Even alpine can
> now display HTML mail as plain text natively.  Mutt is the only
> laggard in this regard that I am aware of.

1. Commonly done != standard. There are standards for things like MIME,
POP3, IMAP etc. I'm not aware of ANSI, ISO, IETF standards that say
that HTML email is a thing. SPAM is by far the biggest part of email
traffic. Do we say that SPAM is a standard?

2. Mutt hasn't had HTML support and people still chose it. I believe
they chose it for simplicity and lightness and being able to run on a
console. 

> A majority of e-mail users PREFER HTML mail.

I don't think there is any proof, given 99% of the world uses Microsoft
Windows and is non-technical, that this supports the idea anybody knows
what peoples' email preferences are. It's much more likely and from
my experience, people just use whatever they get. Outhouse is "the
standard" in that regard, everybody has it, and the default is HTML
email...

I suppose this means a majority of PC users prefer Windows? We know the
reality is the vast majority of people get it on every piece of Intel
hardware they buy, don't know anything else exists, etc. 

> So I think the notion that HTML mail is wrong is just wrong-headed.  I
> certainly have no issue if you want to say you hate it, and I would
> sympathize.  But when you say it's wrong... I think you have no leg to
> stand on.

Likewise, I think trying to bring proofs from usage statistics that
things that just happened (and are mostly targeted at making SPAM and
commercial emails "better") are "standards" isn't compelling.

> > Lots of Microsoft crap seems like an "accepted standard"  
> 
> This has turned out to be remarkably difficult to prove, but I don't
> think HTML mail was invented by Microsoft, or predominated by it.
> AFAICT MS didn't even support HTML in e-mail until 1998, and I'm
> pretty positive Netscape Mail supported it in its first version,
> released the same year.

I think you are probably right. I was just trying to remember the
history as I read your note. At any rate, Microsoft is certainly the
biggest offender.

> > Simplicity and constantly adding new features that are inessential
> > are at odds with each other.   
> 
> This is true and should be considered, but not to the point of leaving
> the application functionally incomplete.

Yes, but people have been adopting and using mutt even when they knew
from the beginning it didn't support HTML. There are already enough GUI
clients that support HTML, why join the fray?

> > I think it's pretty clear the people who use mutt prefer simplicity
> > or they would have chosen something else.   
> 
> I think this is totally crazy.  Mutt is anything but simple, from the
> user point of view.  It is a beast to configure with a monstrous
> learning curve.  Part of what gives it that is the requirement to
> configure how to handle even things like HTML mail, which today pretty
> much no one would exclude from the idea of what is essential e-mail
> functionality.  Everyone, that is, except a subset of Mutt users. =8^)

There are several kinds of simplicity. One is in the UI. Once you set
up mutt you don't have to do anything. When you use it you don't need
to use a mouse or click buttons or go through pages of UI settings.
It's clear what mutt does and doesn't do. It can run on the console
without X. For those reasons I consider it simple.

/jl

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 15:49:05 -0500
Derek Martin  wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:31:21AM +, John Long wrote:
> > That doesn't really help. From my point the issue is not only what I
> > have to configure or what can be configured, but also how much code
> > is behind doing that. Less code is easier to manage than more code.
> > I can't see the benefit of junking up mutt with HTML or anything
> > else that is out of scope for a command-line mail client. Remember,
> > some of us use mutt on a console with no GUI  
> 
> Who is harmed more?  Users who have the feature but don't want it, or
> users who need the feature but can't get it?

That doesn't fall into the category of harmed. I'm not sure of the
timing but I believe in most cases people chose to use mutt after HTML
email was already in common (ab)use.

And I would venture to say that virtually all of the people who use
mutt either as their only email client or along with others, chose mutt
because of its simplicity. It seems to be contrary to the direction and
purpose of mutt to make it do everything anybody wants.

The harm of making the app more complicated and adding a lot of code is
real, and it directly affects the user of mutt whether he's new or old.

/jl

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 09:29:23 +1300
martin f krafft  wrote:

> Regarding the following, written by “John Long” on 2019-10-30 at
> 11:31 Uhr +:
> > 
> > From my point the issue is not only what I have to configure or
> > what can be configured, but also how much code is behind doing
> > that. Less code is easier to manage than more code. I can’t see the
> > benefit of junking up mutt with HTML …
> 
> Fully agreed on all of the above.
> 
> The approach Kevin proposed is completely HTML-agnostic and leaves it
> up to the user to provide an external tool that provides the HTML.
> Mutt then just does the required MIME-handling, which is clearly
> within the domain of a MUA.

I thought there was already the capability in mutt to pipe email to
another application?

> Also, mutt already does receiving/reading multipart/alternative, so
> it only makes sense to figure out how to properly add creation of
> such containers. After all, mutt can sign GPG signatures, not just
> verify them.

I'm not sure what this means since with the PGP config it can verify
also.

> > 
> > Remember, some of us use mutt on a console with no GUI.
> 
> There is no GUI requirement in any of this.

I meant to say that HTML email becomes much less useful and in some
cases worthless without a GUI. You can't display pictures or see
advertising links on the console. I have tried to use various console
browsers like links and lynx and I'm unable to use them with almost any
webpage.

/jl

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:29:31AM +, John Long wrote:
> > I don’t think this is about right and wrong, and not only because
> > there is no objectivity. multipart/alternative is an accepted
> > standard, and so is HTML. You might not like how things have
> > developed, and neither do I, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
> 
> HTML is for web pages. It is wrong for email, yes.

This is just not a supportable position based on anything logical or
evicence-based.  HTML in e-mail has been a de-facto standard for about
as long as most people have been using e-mail (admittedly, much less
true for the folks on this list).  It has almost universal adoption of
native support in almost every e-mail client of note.  Even alpine can
now display HTML mail as plain text natively.  Mutt is the only
laggard in this regard that I am aware of.

A majority of e-mail users PREFER HTML mail.

  https://www.clickz.com/real-world-email-client-usage-the-hard-data/47429/
  https://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/the-science-of-email-marketng/32

So I think the notion that HTML mail is wrong is just wrong-headed.  I
certainly have no issue if you want to say you hate it, and I would
sympathize.  But when you say it's wrong... I think you have no leg to
stand on.

> Lots of Microsoft crap seems like an "accepted standard"

This has turned out to be remarkably difficult to prove, but I don't
think HTML mail was invented by Microsoft, or predominated by it.
AFAICT MS didn't even support HTML in e-mail until 1998, and I'm
pretty positive Netscape Mail supported it in its first version,
released the same year.

> Simplicity and constantly adding new features that are inessential are
> at odds with each other. 

This is true and should be considered, but not to the point of leaving
the application functionally incomplete.

> I think it's pretty clear the people who use mutt prefer simplicity
> or they would have chosen something else. 

I think this is totally crazy.  Mutt is anything but simple, from the
user point of view.  It is a beast to configure with a monstrous
learning curve.  Part of what gives it that is the requirement to
configure how to handle even things like HTML mail, which today pretty
much no one would exclude from the idea of what is essential e-mail
functionality.  Everyone, that is, except a subset of Mutt users. =8^)

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:31:21AM +, John Long wrote:
> That doesn't really help. From my point the issue is not only what I
> have to configure or what can be configured, but also how much code is
> behind doing that. Less code is easier to manage than more code. I
> can't see the benefit of junking up mutt with HTML or anything else
> that is out of scope for a command-line mail client. Remember, some of
> us use mutt on a console with no GUI

Who is harmed more?  Users who have the feature but don't want it, or
users who need the feature but can't get it?

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 07:04:48PM +, John Long wrote:
> > so you cater to people who have no idea, and cannot be bothered.
> 
> Which is probably 99.9% of everybody in corp. offices worldwide.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for HTML support in mutt. HTML
> has absolutely no place in email. 

Sadly, the masses have decided this for us, and this opinion has lost
the battle.  And TBH while I mostly sympathize, using underlining,
bold, and italics in type have been common for emphasis and similar
purposes for centuries.  And color more recently, but certainly
decades.  It would be nice to be able to make use of these instead of
relying on ASCII art to attempt to convey them.  And before someone
brings up RTF, just... no.

> But I do understand the problem very well after doing some
> contracting for big corporations and realizing 100s of millions of
> Windows victims can barely use a computer at all and email is just
> the tip of the iceberg.
> 
> My solution is to use something other than mutt in those cases. There
> is no way to win...

TBH most of the time, if I really need to see what's in an HTML mail,
I just bounce it to gmail.  But sometimes that doesn't work either due
to DNS-based spam prevention.

I'm well aware there are "solutions" to this problem.  I've used them
all.  They all suck (fail to handle some edge case very well or at
all).

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt



Regarding the following, written by “John Long” on 2019-10-30 at 11:31 Uhr +:

From my point the issue is not only what I have to configure or what can be configured, but also how much code is behind doing that. Less code is easier to manage than more code. I can’t see the benefit of junking up mutt with HTML …

Fully agreed on all of the above.
The approach Kevin proposed is completely HTML-agnostic and leaves it up to the user to provide an external tool that provides the HTML. Mutt then just does the required MIME-handling, which is clearly within the domain of a MUA.
Also, mutt already does receiving/reading multipart/alternative, so it only makes sense to figure out how to properly add creation of such containers. After all, mutt can sign GPG signatures, not just verify them.

Remember, some of us use mutt on a console with no GUI.

There is no GUI requirement in any of this.
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt



Regarding the following, written by “Mark H. Wood” on 2019-10-30 at 08:22 Uhr -0400:

Even Outlook seems incapable of badly damaging blocks of text, indented blocks of text, emphasis, underscore/italics, or lists.

I think this is the perfect reason why mutt needs to learn creating multipart/alternative parts, and to do it right, so that it can continue to suck the least of all MUAs.
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt



Regarding the following, written by “Dave Woodfall” on 2019-10-30 at 11:25 Uhr +:

When messages turn up with no plain text part to them at all, or one that’s completely useless, it’s wrong.

I’d guess we all agree on that point.
We’re currently discussing the creation of multipart/alternative containers, which place the HTML part as an alternative to the plain-text part, so you can freely choose which one to read. Nobody is suggesting mutt no longer sends text/plain by default.
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Grant Edwards

On 2019-10-30, Derek Martin  wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 10:31:19PM -, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2019-10-29, martin f krafft  wrote:
>> That's true (as I understood the problem, anyway).  Fortunately, I
>> never needed to send a signed message with an attachment (or just a
>> signed message, AFAIR).  Nobody I know would have the faintest idea
>> what to do with a signed message.
>
> Half the people in this thread are sending them, so I think that must
> not be entirely true. =8^)

I don't know anybody in this thread (or list, for that matter).

-- 
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 10:31:19PM -, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2019-10-29, martin f krafft  wrote:
> That's true (as I understood the problem, anyway).  Fortunately, I
> never needed to send a signed message with an attachment (or just a
> signed message, AFAIR).  Nobody I know would have the faintest idea
> what to do with a signed message.

Half the people in this thread are sending them, so I think that must
not be entirely true. =8^)

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 11:11:31PM +0100, Matthias Apitz wrote:
> El día lunes, octubre 28, 2019 a las 04:50:40p. m. -0500, Derek Martin 
> escribió:
> 
> > > FWIW, I (as a mutt user for 15++ years) do not need this. Thanks
> > 
> > Perhaps not, but the fact that it keeps coming up here is pretty clear
> > indication that it's a feature that would be useful to a lot of
> > people...
> 
> Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they are?
> I speak only for my own interests (as I said: I do not need this).

I speak for myself, but you seemed eager to bring your authority into
it, with giving your length of experience using Mutt.  If you want to
do that, then I'm happy to point out that in the 23+ years *I've* been
a member of the Mutt community, frequent poster, and occasional code
contributor here, I've seen lots and lots and lots of people asking
about how (better) to handle HTML mail.  If you want to know who they
are, feel free to search the archives.

Mutt is a mail user agent, and like it or not, a large amount of mail
is now sent in HTML format.  Isn't the MUA's job to handle e-mail?
Well, I think it is, and Mutt does not do a complete job of it, for a
large subset of e-mail messages.  This thread has highlighted that
lots of people have issues dealing with the available solutions.  They
all "work" to some degree, but they often have failings that simply
can't be overcome, or require a very specific set of tools that may
not even be available to you, if you are reading mail on a system you
do not manage.

If Mutt handled HTML mail natively in some fashion, these issues would
cease to be issues.  That's exactly why I think support very much
belongs in Mutt proper.

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Grant Edwards

On 2019-10-30, Sean Greenslade  wrote:

> Of course there's massive selection bias in this list. No question
> about that. I just wanted to point out that there definitely are
> some younger Mutters out there. Though I tend to fall more on the
> grumpy about HTML mails side of this argument, so maybe age isn't
> that relevant.

Just because I've realized that my need for effective communication
requires that I create multipart HTML/plaintext messages it doesn't
mean I'm not grumpy about HTML mails...

I just know when I've lost the battle.

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread John Long

On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 07:53:30 -0700
Sean Greenslade  wrote:

> Of course there's massive selection bias in this list. No question
> about that. I just wanted to point out that there definitely are some
> younger Mutters out there. Though I tend to fall more on the grumpy
> about HTML mails side of this argument, so maybe age isn't that
> relevant.

True enough, "Old Fart" and "Grumpy Old Man" are states of mind :D

/jl

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Sean Greenslade

On October 30, 2019 7:41:34 AM PDT, Patrick Shanahan  wrote:
>* Sean Greenslade  [10-30-19 10:37]:
>> On October 30, 2019 5:29:01 AM PDT, Patrick Shanahan
> wrote:
>> >* Mark H. Wood  [10-30-19 08:26]:
>> >> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:37:43PM +1300, martin f krafft wrote:
>> >> >I'd love to see some statistics about the age of mutt users.
>> >> 
>> >> 62
>> >
>> >78
>> 
>> Not sure if these are guesses at the average or reported data points.
>If
>> it's the latter, I'll offer my own:
>> 
>> 26
>
>since the request was rather non-specific and limited to only those
>interested in reading the thread, not sure it makes any difference. 
>almost like polling results related by politicians.

Of course there's massive selection bias in this list. No question about that. 
I just wanted to point out that there definitely are some younger Mutters out 
there. Though I tend to fall more on the grumpy about HTML mails side of this 
argument, so maybe age isn't that relevant.

--Sean

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Patrick Shanahan

* Patrick Shanahan  [10-30-19 10:42]:
> * Sean Greenslade  [10-30-19 10:37]:
> > On October 30, 2019 5:29:01 AM PDT, Patrick Shanahan  
> > wrote:
> > >* Mark H. Wood  [10-30-19 08:26]:
> > >> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:37:43PM +1300, martin f krafft wrote:
> > >> >I'd love to see some statistics about the age of mutt users.
> > >> 
> > >> 62
> > >
> > >78
> > 
> > Not sure if these are guesses at the average or reported data points. If
> > it's the latter, I'll offer my own:
> > 
> > 26
> 
> since the request was rather non-specific and limited to only those
> interested in reading the thread, not sure it makes any difference. 
> almost like polling results related by politicians.

s/request /request as stated/

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Patrick Shanahan

* Sean Greenslade  [10-30-19 10:37]:
> On October 30, 2019 5:29:01 AM PDT, Patrick Shanahan  
> wrote:
> >* Mark H. Wood  [10-30-19 08:26]:
> >> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:37:43PM +1300, martin f krafft wrote:
> >> >I'd love to see some statistics about the age of mutt users.
> >> 
> >> 62
> >
> >78
> 
> Not sure if these are guesses at the average or reported data points. If
> it's the latter, I'll offer my own:
> 
> 26

since the request was rather non-specific and limited to only those
interested in reading the thread, not sure it makes any difference. 
almost like polling results related by politicians.


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(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo   paka @ IRCnet freenode

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Sean Greenslade

On October 30, 2019 5:29:01 AM PDT, Patrick Shanahan  wrote:
>* Mark H. Wood  [10-30-19 08:26]:
>> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:37:43PM +1300, martin f krafft wrote:
>> >I'd love to see some statistics about the age of mutt users.
>> 
>> 62
>
>78

Not sure if these are guesses at the average or reported data points. If it's 
the latter, I'll offer my own:

26

--Sean

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Patrick Shanahan

* Mark H. Wood  [10-30-19 08:26]:
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:37:43PM +1300, martin f krafft wrote:
> >I'd love to see some statistics about the age of mutt users.
> 
> 62

78


-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo   paka @ IRCnet freenode

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Mark H. Wood

On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 11:37:43PM +1300, martin f krafft wrote:
>I'd love to see some statistics about the age of mutt users.

62

-- 
Mark H. Wood
Lead Technology Analyst

University Library
Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis
755 W. Michigan Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202
317-274-0749
www.ulib.iupui.edu


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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Mark H. Wood

On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 12:57:59PM +1300, martin f krafft wrote:
>Regarding the following, written by "Martin Trautmann" on 2019-10-30 at
>00:14 Uhr +0100:
> 
>  That's such a strange thing.
>  [...]
>  since they never learned, how proper threading and quoting could
>  have worked?
> 
>78 characters wide text/plain is just not the lowest common denominator
>anymore. I am not going to sing an ode to HTML email, but being able to
>use Markdown to create more expressive emails than using ASCII art is
>not something I find utterly offensive.

Here, I think, is the point at which various posters' results diverge.
I've never had anyone complain about my text/plain emails, but I've
never had any need to write fancy stuff.  Even Outlook seems incapable
of badly damaging blocks of text, indented blocks of text, *emphasis*,
_underscore/italics_, or lists.

(Or else my correspondents are more tolerant than I'd thought they
needed to be.)

-- 
Mark H. Wood
Lead Technology Analyst

University Library
Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis
755 W. Michigan Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202
317-274-0749
www.ulib.iupui.edu

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Description: PGP signature

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread John Long

On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 23:37:43 +1300
martin f krafft  wrote:

> Regarding the following, written by “Nuno Silva” on 2019-10-30 at
> 09:21 Uhr +:
> > 
> > There are users who don’t need text/html. It’s okay to want some
> > way to use HTML for e-mail in mutt, but I’d say it’s not okay to
> > say everybody needs it.
> 
> I’d love to see some statistics about the age of mutt users.
> 
> Just to be clear: any solution will be configurable, so nobody will
> be forced to use it. --

That doesn't really help. From my point the issue is not only what I
have to configure or what can be configured, but also how much code is
behind doing that. Less code is easier to manage than more code. I
can't see the benefit of junking up mutt with HTML or anything else
that is out of scope for a command-line mail client. Remember, some of
us use mutt on a console with no GUI

/jl

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Dave Woodfall

On Wed 30 Oct 2019 23:53,
martin f krafft  put forth the proposition:
> Regarding the following, written by "Dave Woodfall" on 2019-10-30 at 10:05 
> Uhr +:
> > I don't think embracing wrong email practices is the way forward.
>
> I don't think this is about right and wrong, and not only because there is
> no objectivity. multipart/alternative is an accepted standard, and so is
> HTML. You might not like how things have developed, and neither do I, but
> that doesn't make it wrong.

When messages turn up with no plain text part to them at all, or one that's
completely useless, it's wrong.  If people use clients that produce things like
that then I'd say it's better to try to educate people to do it right, rather
than to adapt to their ways.

(I've mostly had this problem with email from a few shops, who use some kind of
PHP mailer that messes things up.  There's a thread here about how to set up a
list of 'htmlers' to deal with those.)

> The fact that the vast majority have adopted HTML for emails means you
> cannot really ignore it anymore. Mutt already handles receiving/reading
> alternative parts quite well. Being able to produce those parts will mean
> it'll suck less for those who need or want this functionality.

It's not about ignoring it.  It's not new and there are clients out there that
handle HTML with images, and all the other bells and whistles, more better than
mutt will ever do.

I am probably a bit biased here, because I don't run X11 99% of the time, and
elinks is my main web browser, so I use it a lot.  I rarely need to start X to
run GUI applications.

Most of the messages I receive are from other *nix users on technical mailing
lists like this, who wouldn't dream of sending HTML.  If I had to live in a
Windows world then I'd probably do things differently.

Fortunately, I don't.

-dw

--

Government's Law:
There is an exception to all laws.

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread John Long

On Wed, 30 Oct 2019 23:53:40 +1300
martin f krafft  wrote:

> Regarding the following, written by “Dave Woodfall” on 2019-10-30 at
> 10:05 Uhr +:
> > 
> > I don’t think embracing wrong email practices is the way forward.
> 
> I don’t think this is about right and wrong, and not only because
> there is no objectivity. multipart/alternative is an accepted
> standard, and so is HTML. You might not like how things have
> developed, and neither do I, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

HTML is for web pages. It is wrong for email, yes.

Lots of Microsoft crap seems like an "accepted standard" but that's
really just bullying, because they come preinstalled on 99% of
Intel/AMD hardware. Just because everybody says the world is flat does
not mean it's true.

> The fact that the vast majority have adopted HTML for emails means
> you cannot really ignore it anymore.

I read those emails with a GUI client that I don't like very much and
like less and less with each new release. I like mutt for mailing lists
and corresponding with technical people.

> Mutt already handles receiving/reading alternative parts quite well.
> Being able to produce those parts will mean it’ll suck less for those
> who need or want this functionality.

Simplicity and constantly adding new features that are inessential are
at odds with each other. I think it's pretty clear the people who use
mutt prefer simplicity or they would have chosen something else. There
are enough other email clients for people in other camps. Sometimes you
have to have more than one tool for different jobs, even though they're
superficially similar.

/jl

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt



Regarding the following, written by “Dave Woodfall” on 2019-10-30 at 10:05 Uhr +:

I don’t think embracing wrong email practices is the way forward.

I don’t think this is about right and wrong, and not only because there is no objectivity. multipart/alternative is an accepted standard, and so is HTML. You might not like how things have developed, and neither do I, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
The fact that the vast majority have adopted HTML for emails means you cannot really ignore it anymore. Mutt already handles receiving/reading alternative parts quite well. Being able to produce those parts will mean it’ll suck less for those who need or want this functionality.
-- @martinkrafft | https://riot.im/app/#/room/#madduck:madduck.net "to me, vi is zen. to use vi is to practice zen. every command is a koan. profound to the user, unintelligible to the uninitiated. you discover truth everytime you use it." -- reddy ät lion.austin.ibm.com spamtraps: madduck.bo...@madduck.net

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt



Regarding the following, written by “Nuno Silva” on 2019-10-30 at 09:21 Uhr +:

There are users who don’t need text/html. It’s okay to want some way to use HTML for e-mail in mutt, but I’d say it’s not okay to say everybody needs it.

I’d love to see some statistics about the age of mutt users.
Just to be clear: any solution will be configurable, so nobody will be forced to use it.
-- @martinkrafft | https://riot.im/app/#/room/#madduck:madduck.net "everyone has a little secret he keeps, i like the fires when the city sleeps."  -- mc 900 ft jesus spamtraps: madduck.bo...@madduck.net

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread Dave Woodfall

On Wed 30 Oct 2019 12:57,
martin f krafft  put forth the proposition:
> Regarding the following, written by "Martin Trautmann" on 2019-10-30 at 00:14 
> Uhr +0100:
> > That's such a strange thing.
> > […]
> > since they never learned, how proper threading and quoting could have
> > worked?
>
> 78 characters wide text/plain is just not the lowest common denominator
> anymore. I am not going to sing an ode to HTML email, but being able to use
> Markdown to create more expressive emails than using ASCII art is not
> something I find utterly offensive.
>
> If you want someone to blame, shake your fist at Microsoft (for forcing HTML
> into email), and Google (for actively breaking threading and quoting rules).
> That said, Gmail is far easier to use if you want to refer back to content
> written earlier in a thread than mutt, where you either have to save a
> draft, or open a second instance, find the thread, and navigate around
> messages, or use clunky search.
>
> Society has moved on, and we all risk sounding like grumpy old folks
> reminiscing at the times when everyone knew what netiquette was if we don't
> embrace the progress that's been happening around us. And text/html is part
> of that progress, whether you like it or not.
>
> If we don't embrace progress, then mutt will not have any users in a decade
> or two.

I don't think embracing wrong email practices is the way forward.  If
I really needed HTML support then I'd use something like claws-mail,
and not change mutt to support it.

Most of my correspondence is with other *nix users though, who mostly
do it right.

For everyone else I press 'z'.

macro pager,index,attach z ":unauto_view 
text/html|~/.mutt/elinks:auto_view
text/html"



--

Q:  How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A:  Three.  One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government
plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a pulitzer
prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb
assassin to break the bulb in the first place.

#!/bin/sh

TMPFILE="/tmp/mutt-elinks.html"
cat /dev/stdin | sed "s,$,,g" > "$TMPFILE"
elinks -force-html "$TMPFILE"

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-30 Thread nunojsilva

On 2019-10-29, martin f krafft wrote:

[...]
> Society has moved on, and we all risk sounding like grumpy old folks
> reminiscing at the times when everyone knew what netiquette was if we
> don't embrace the progress that's been happening around us. And
> text/html is part of that progress, whether you like it or not.
>
> If we don't embrace progress, then mutt will not have any users in a
> decade or two.

There are users who don't need text/html. It's okay to want some way to
use HTML for e-mail in mutt, but I'd say it's not okay to say everybody
needs it.

-- 
Nuno Silva

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-29 Thread Patrick Shanahan

* Grant Edwards  [10-29-19 18:27]:
> On 2019-10-29, Patrick Shanahan  wrote:
> > * Grant Edwards  [10-29-19 13:10]:
> >
> >> Muttdown (a "sendmail" filter) which creates mutlipart alternative
> >> html/text messages is the only reason I've been able to continue to
> >> use mutt for the past 5-6 years.  About 90% of the people to whom I
> >> send email can't deal with plaintext only. The display of plaintext is
> >> butchered horribly by Outlook, and using plaintext-only makes me look
> >> incompetent because I can't send an easy-to-read email (the recipient
> >> has to save it as a text file and open it with notepad++ in a fixed
> >> font for it to be readable).
> >
> > so you cater to people who have no idea, and cannot be bothered.
> 
> Yep.  If you're intent is to communicate with other poeple, you have
> to use a medium and language understood by them.  Otherwise you're
> just singing in the shower.
> 
> I suppose I could limit my social and professional interaction
> strictly to other mutt users.  Somebody should try that and let me
> know how it goes...

fwiw, I do not have that problem and continually communicate with others
and *still* am using mutt for nearly 20 years.  perhaps the problem is in
the chair in front of your keyboard.

-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo   paka @ IRCnet freenode

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-29 Thread martin f krafft



Regarding the following, written by “Martin Trautmann” on 2019-10-30 at 00:14 Uhr +0100:

That’s such a strange thing.
[…]
since they never learned, how proper threading and quoting could have worked?

78 characters wide text/plain is just not the lowest common denominator anymore. I am not going to sing an ode to HTML email, but being able to use Markdown to create more expressive emails than using ASCII art is not something I find utterly offensive.
If you want someone to blame, shake your fist at Microsoft (for forcing HTML into email), and Google (for actively breaking threading and quoting rules). That said, Gmail is far easier to use if you want to refer back to content written earlier in a thread than mutt, where you either have to save a draft, or open a second instance, find the thread, and navigate around messages, or use clunky search.
Society has moved on, and we all risk sounding like grumpy old folks reminiscing at the times when everyone knew what netiquette was if we don’t embrace the progress that’s been happening around us. And text/html is part of that progress, whether you like it or not.
If we don’t embrace progress, then mutt will not have any users in a decade or two.
-- @martinkrafft | https://riot.im/app/#/room/#madduck:madduck.net fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.   -- the irish times, washington dc spamtraps: madduck.bo...@madduck.net

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-29 Thread Martin Trautmann

On 19-10-29 18:09, Grant Edwards wrote:

> Muttdown (a "sendmail" filter) which creates mutlipart alternative
> html/text messages is the only reason I've been able to continue to
> use mutt for the past 5-6 years.  About 90% of the people to whom I
> send email can't deal with plaintext only. The display of plaintext is
> butchered horribly by Outlook, and using plaintext-only makes me look
> incompetent because I can't send an easy-to-read email (the recipient
> has to save it as a text file and open it with notepad++ in a fixed
> font for it to be readable).

That's such a strange thing.

Are those the same people who
- embed textual information within pictures
- send information as Word attachment instead of a simple
  text message within the mail
- and finally refuse to use email, claiming this is system is
  dead by now
  ... while they feel most comfortable with twitter and whatsapp
  messages, using plain text only

since they never learned, how proper threading and quoting could have
worked?

Schönen Gruß
Martin



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Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On 2019-10-29, martin f krafft  wrote:
> [/home/grante/bin/unmime.py: html rendered using w3m]
> Regarding the following, written by “Grant Edwards” on 2019-10-29 at 17:09 Uhr
> -:
>
> Muttdown (a “sendmail” filter) which creates mutlipart alternative html/
> text messages is the only reason I’ve been able to continue to use mutt 
> for
> the past 5-6 years.
>
> Muttdown suffers from the same problems relating to attachments in signed
> messages as outlined in the initial post.

That's true (as I understood the problem, anyway).  Fortunately, I
never needed to send a signed message with an attachment (or just a
signed message, AFAIR).  Nobody I know would have the faintest idea
what to do with a signed message.

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Half a mind is a
  at   terrible thing to waste!
  gmail.com

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On 2019-10-29,  (Nuno Silva)  
wrote:
> On 2019-10-29, John Long wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 29 Oct 2019 14:50:05 -0400
>> Patrick Shanahan  wrote:
>>
>>> * Grant Edwards  [10-29-19 13:10]:
> [...]
>>> > Muttdown (a "sendmail" filter) which creates mutlipart alternative
>>> > html/text messages is the only reason I've been able to continue to
>>> > use mutt for the past 5-6 years.  About 90% of the people to whom I
>>> > send email can't deal with plaintext only. The display of plaintext
>>> > is butchered horribly by Outlook, 
>>
>> This is sadly, absolutely true. It's beyond frustrating to format an
>> email carefully in ASCII text and then have it look like a telegram
>> from Charles Manson by the time Outlook is done with it.
> [...]
>
> What about composing html in the text editor and changing the
> content-type to text/html with ^T in mutt?

The only what that's practical is to put everything inside 
with some embedded CSS to pick a fixed font.  In theory that could
work.

Muttdown is far, far simpler and produces very nice looking results.

It allows multi-level quoting, lists, code blocks, and so on.

The key is to bind a button/command in your editor to a 'preview'
command that runs the buffer through muttdown and shows the result in
a browser.  That gives you a pretty good idea what the recipient will
see.

> It might be inconvenient for more complex messages, but could perhaps
> help in these cases where you're sending something that would otherwise
> go as plain text to Outlook users.

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Used staples are good
  at   with SOY SAUCE!
  gmail.com

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On 2019-10-29, Patrick Shanahan  wrote:
> * Grant Edwards  [10-29-19 13:10]:
>
>> Muttdown (a "sendmail" filter) which creates mutlipart alternative
>> html/text messages is the only reason I've been able to continue to
>> use mutt for the past 5-6 years.  About 90% of the people to whom I
>> send email can't deal with plaintext only. The display of plaintext is
>> butchered horribly by Outlook, and using plaintext-only makes me look
>> incompetent because I can't send an easy-to-read email (the recipient
>> has to save it as a text file and open it with notepad++ in a fixed
>> font for it to be readable).
>
> so you cater to people who have no idea, and cannot be bothered.

Yep.  If you're intent is to communicate with other poeple, you have
to use a medium and language understood by them.  Otherwise you're
just singing in the shower.

I suppose I could limit my social and professional interaction
strictly to other mutt users.  Somebody should try that and let me
know how it goes...

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! for ARTIFICIAL
  at   FLAVORING!!
  gmail.com

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-29 Thread martin f krafft



Regarding the following, written by “Grant Edwards” on 2019-10-29 at 17:09 Uhr -:

Muttdown (a “sendmail” filter) which creates mutlipart alternative html/text messages is the only reason I’ve been able to continue to use mutt for the past 5-6 years.

Muttdown suffers from the same problems relating to attachments in signed messages as outlined in the initial post.
-- @martinkrafft | https://riot.im/app/#/room/#madduck:madduck.net for four-fifths of our history,  our planet was populated by pond scum.  -- j.w. schopf spamtraps: madduck.bo...@madduck.net

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-29 Thread nunojsilva

On 2019-10-29, John Long wrote:

> On Tue, 29 Oct 2019 14:50:05 -0400
> Patrick Shanahan  wrote:
>
>> * Grant Edwards  [10-29-19 13:10]:
[...]
>> > Muttdown (a "sendmail" filter) which creates mutlipart alternative
>> > html/text messages is the only reason I've been able to continue to
>> > use mutt for the past 5-6 years.  About 90% of the people to whom I
>> > send email can't deal with plaintext only. The display of plaintext
>> > is butchered horribly by Outlook, 
>
> This is sadly, absolutely true. It's beyond frustrating to format an
> email carefully in ASCII text and then have it look like a telegram
> from Charles Manson by the time Outlook is done with it.
[...]

What about composing html in the text editor and changing the
content-type to text/html with ^T in mutt?

It might be inconvenient for more complex messages, but could perhaps
help in these cases where you're sending something that would otherwise
go as plain text to Outlook users.

-- 
Nuno Silva

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-29 Thread John Long

On Tue, 29 Oct 2019 14:50:05 -0400
Patrick Shanahan  wrote:

> * Grant Edwards  [10-29-19 13:10]:
> > On 2019-10-28, Matthias Apitz  wrote:  
> > > El día lunes, octubre 28, 2019 a las 04:50:40p. m. -0500, Derek
> > > Martin escribió: 
> > >> > FWIW, I (as a mutt user for 15++ years) do not need this.
> > >> > Thanks  
> > >> 
> > >> Perhaps not, but the fact that it keeps coming up here is pretty
> > >> clear indication that it's a feature that would be useful to a
> > >> lot of people...  
> > >
> > > Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they
> > > are?  
> > 
> > Muttdown (a "sendmail" filter) which creates mutlipart alternative
> > html/text messages is the only reason I've been able to continue to
> > use mutt for the past 5-6 years.  About 90% of the people to whom I
> > send email can't deal with plaintext only. The display of plaintext
> > is butchered horribly by Outlook, 

This is sadly, absolutely true. It's beyond frustrating to format an
email carefully in ASCII text and then have it look like a telegram
from Charles Manson by the time Outlook is done with it.

> > and using plaintext-only makes me
> > look incompetent because I can't send an easy-to-read email (the
> > recipient has to save it as a text file and open it with notepad++
> > in a fixed font for it to be readable).  
> 
> so you cater to people who have no idea, and cannot be bothered.

Which is probably 99.9% of everybody in corp. offices worldwide.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for HTML support in mutt. HTML
has absolutely no place in email. But I do understand the problem very
well after doing some contracting for big corporations and realizing
100s of millions of Windows victims can barely use a computer at all
and email is just the tip of the iceberg.

My solution is to use something other than mutt in those cases. There
is no way to win...

/jl

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-29 Thread Patrick Shanahan

* Grant Edwards  [10-29-19 13:10]:
> On 2019-10-28, Matthias Apitz  wrote:
> > El día lunes, octubre 28, 2019 a las 04:50:40p. m. -0500, Derek Martin 
> > escribió:
> >
> >> > FWIW, I (as a mutt user for 15++ years) do not need this. Thanks
> >> 
> >> Perhaps not, but the fact that it keeps coming up here is pretty clear
> >> indication that it's a feature that would be useful to a lot of
> >> people...
> >
> > Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they are?
> 
> Muttdown (a "sendmail" filter) which creates mutlipart alternative
> html/text messages is the only reason I've been able to continue to
> use mutt for the past 5-6 years.  About 90% of the people to whom I
> send email can't deal with plaintext only. The display of plaintext is
> butchered horribly by Outlook, and using plaintext-only makes me look
> incompetent because I can't send an easy-to-read email (the recipient
> has to save it as a text file and open it with notepad++ in a fixed
> font for it to be readable).

so you cater to people who have no idea, and cannot be bothered.

-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo   paka @ IRCnet freenode

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

On 2019-10-28, Matthias Apitz  wrote:
> El día lunes, octubre 28, 2019 a las 04:50:40p. m. -0500, Derek Martin 
> escribió:
>
>> > FWIW, I (as a mutt user for 15++ years) do not need this. Thanks
>> 
>> Perhaps not, but the fact that it keeps coming up here is pretty clear
>> indication that it's a feature that would be useful to a lot of
>> people...
>
> Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they are?

Muttdown (a "sendmail" filter) which creates mutlipart alternative
html/text messages is the only reason I've been able to continue to
use mutt for the past 5-6 years.  About 90% of the people to whom I
send email can't deal with plaintext only. The display of plaintext is
butchered horribly by Outlook, and using plaintext-only makes me look
incompetent because I can't send an easy-to-read email (the recipient
has to save it as a text file and open it with notepad++ in a fixed
font for it to be readable).

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Go on, EMOTE!
  at   I was RAISED on thought
  gmail.comballoons!!

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-29 Thread Kevin J. McCarthy


On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 10:15:22PM +1300, martin f krafft wrote:

Regarding the following, written by "Kevin J. McCarthy" on 2019-10-29 at 12:58 
Uhr +0800:
instead of the script returning content of a specific type, and thus 
always with the same content type (unless the filter script is 
interactive of sorts), what about a command or option that I can use to 
instruct mutt to generate an alternative of a given MIME type, which is 
then passed to the script, and the return data assumed as such.


I'll think about it, but that may be more designing than I can bite off 
right now.


Because the filter is configurable via a variable, you could certainly 
have a compose menu macro to change the value of the variable, combined 
with visual feedback from the :echo command.  The variable should also 
be able to accommodate a parameter (set by you).


It may be a bit more trouble for you the add the mime type + blank line 
in the output, but I think it gives more flexibility.  If others have 
opinions, please chime in though!


Now, I could configure mutt to always add a text/html alternative, but 
also have a command from the compose menu allowing me to add e.g. 
text/enriched, or application/pdf.


Note also, this iteration is only going to be able to generate a single 
alternative.


Yes, this is one of the places I need to look at.  My plan is the 
simplest, as you mentioned: discard the alternative when generating 
anything that goes through the compose menu.


… but not on messages that are being forwarded as attachments. Those 
don't get touched, right?


Sorry, I got confused.  If we're talking about $mime_forward, then no, 
it shouldn't get touched.  $forward_attachments (version 1.12+) runs 
through the decoder though.  I think the places I have to worry about 
are templates and resuming, but I need to look more closely.


I'll be working on this in the 'kevin/multipart-alternative' branch, but 
just fyi that I force-push to my development branches, and they are 
usually "work in progress".


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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-29 Thread martin f krafft

Regarding the following, written by “Kevin J. McCarthy” on 2019-10-29 at 12:58 Uhr +0800:

The part creation (and removal) will be in Mutt’s pipeline, and so will follow normal processing that Mutt does. That include encoding, delimiters, charset conversion, etc. So I would like the script to simply produce the HTML (or PDF, or whatever) output, without trying to “mailify” the output.

Makes perfect sense.
At the risk of overcomplicating things at this stage, I do want to put one more idea out there, which is that instead of the script returning content of a specific type, and thus always with the same content type (unless the filter script is interactive of sorts), what about a command or option that I can use to instruct mutt to generate an alternative of a given MIME type, which is then passed to the script, and the return data assumed as such.
Now, I could configure mutt to always add a text/html alternative, but also have a command from the compose menu allowing me to add e.g. text/enriched, or application/pdf.

Reusing as a template would be resolved if we kept a local record >of the messages without the generated content, similar to how >$fcc_attach removes the attachments before storing.
For this iteration, I didn’t plan on going here. $fcc_attach would still just remove attachments, the main content would be stored as it were generated (i.e. including multipart/alternatives). Maybe in the next iteration I could add an option to strip the alternative.

The more I think about this, the less I think this should be an option. Even $fcc_attach is already quite a problem, especially since it means that the message stored locally isn’t the same as the one you sent, with a different GPG signature and all.

Yes, this is one of the places I need to look at. My plan is the simplest, as you mentioned: discard the alternative when generating anything that goes through the compose menu.

… but not on messages that are being forwarded as attachments. Those don’t get touched, right?
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-28 Thread Kevin J. McCarthy


On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 12:41:44PM +1300, martin f krafft wrote:
Script output would be the content-type, a blank line, then the 
generated content.


This makes me itch, but I cannot really devise a better approach. I 
want to say that the script needs to return the complete MIME part, 
including Content-Transfer-Encoding and other headers, or are you 
confident that Mutt can deduce all these parameters from the generated 
content?


The part creation (and removal) will be in Mutt's pipeline, and so will 
follow normal processing that Mutt does.  That include encoding, 
delimiters, charset conversion, etc.  So I would like the script to 
simply produce the HTML (or PDF, or whatever) output, without trying to 
"mailify" the output.


I think it would be okay for a charset to optionally be included in the 
content-type.  I have to think about whether to force-charset in that 
case, or still respect $send_charset.


But I don't think allowing other headers would help.  Mutt can determine 
the best content-encoding, and I think it's fair to set disposition to 
inline.  If the approach turns out to be insufficient, we can add 
features.


Reusing as a template would be resolved if we kept a local record of 
the messages without the generated content, similar to how 
`$fcc_attach` removes the attachments before storing.


For this iteration, I didn't plan on going here.  $fcc_attach would 
still just remove attachments, the main content would be stored as it 
were generated (i.e. including multipart/alternatives).  Maybe in the 
next iteration I could add an option to strip the alternative.


However — and I just experienced this — forwarding a message as 
attachment now means that it'll be plain-text only.


Yes, this is one of the places I need to look at.  My plan is the 
simplest, as you mentioned: discard the alternative when generating 
anything that goes through the compose menu.


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Kevin J. McCarthy
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-28 Thread Akkana Peck

Matthias Apitz writes:
> So, run mutt in an unicode-rxvt terminal. It presents URLs underlined
> and click-able. I do so and sometimes I do hate it: you click into your

Definitely not by default. I'm using rxvt-unicode, and I've tried
the "matcher" and "selection" extensions but neither one worked for
selecting multiline URLs. Do you know one that does? I only recently
switched to urxvt and I've been surprised at how bad it is at
URL selection compared to xterm (xterm has charClass and cutChars
resources you can configure that work very well for URLs).

I get the impression the mutt pager breaks long URLs anyway, which
makes it harder for a terminal to select them. It would be great to
have an option not to break them and just let the terminal wrap them
(I know that makes it harder to predict how many lines the display is).

If we're counting votes, I'm another longtime mutt fan who'd love to
be able to compose and send simple HTML messages. There are lots of
options for displaying incoming HTML messages -- none of them are
perfect, e.g. the link-clicking problem, but they're okay -- but
replying to HTML messages in mutt without losing all the formatting
is much more difficult. I spent a week or so several years ago and
never managed it (I ended up writing a python script for the once or
twice a year when I really need to send HTML mail) so I'm reading this
thread with interest to see what solutions other people come up with.

...Akkana

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

El día lunes, octubre 28, 2019 a las 06:33:19p. m. -0400, José María Mateos 
escribió:

> On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 11:11:31PM +0100, Matthias Apitz wrote:
> >Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they are?
> >I speak only for my own interests (as I said: I do not need this).
> 
> Talking for myself, I really don't need point 1 (composing of HTML 
> messages), but number 2, opening links in an easy way, would be a nice 
> to have. I can always user urlview or send the HTML file to Firefox, but 
> any of these solutions is slower than simply being able to somehow tell 
> mutt "open URL #12 from this e-mail", and have that sent to the web 
> browser.

So, run mutt in an unicode-rxvt terminal. It presents URLs underlined
and click-able. I do so and sometimes I do hate it: you click into your
terminal to get the focus to it, or even as an accident, and hit an URL and
it jumps off to FF.

matthias


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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

El día martes, octubre 29, 2019 a las 11:19:43a. m. +1300, martin f krafft 
escribió:

> Regarding the following, written by "Matthias Apitz" on 2019-10-28 at 23:11 
> Uhr +0100:
> >Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they are? 
> >I speak only for my own interests (as I said: I do not need this).
> 
> Matthias, any such feature would of course be optional, and probably 
> default to off for a long time, so you have nothing to worry about.

I don't worry about this. I only do not like people expressing their own
interests with a 'lot of people demand xyz'.

matthias
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-28 Thread Dave Woodfall

> 2. The ability to natively display a subset of HTML (the same subset)
>with the ability to trigger links to open in a browser (or perhaps
>execute an arbitrary configured command).  Modern terminal windows
>can handle all of the formatting required to do just this much...

elinks -dump can display HTML using autoview, or it can be bound to run
manually too, in its normal browser manner.

urlview can open links in plain text messages.

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-28 Thread martin f krafft

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and plans on this. This all reads
really well, and I think it would go most of the way towards the
ideal solution.

I have a couple of points/questions about some of the things you
propose:

If there were an error sending, the alternative would be stripped
before returning to the compose menu. So it would not be exposed
to the compose menu. I *might* add a function to preview the
output as raw text and via mime from the compose menu though.

The ability to preview sounds great, and I would greatly appreciate
it.

Script output would be the content-type, a blank line, then the
generated content.

This makes me itch, but I cannot really devise a better approach. I
want to say that the script needs to return the complete MIME part,
including Content-Transfer-Encoding and other headers, or are you
confident that Mutt can deduce all these parameters from the
generated content?

Anyway, that's my current plan. The problem is cleaning up some
other parts of mutt to deal with bouncing, reuse as a template,
etc.

Reusing as a template would be resolved if we kept a local record of
the messages without the generated content, similar to how
`$fcc_attach` removes the attachments before storing.

However — and I just experienced this — forwarding a message as
attachment now means that it'll be plain-text only.

Processing a message to be attached, or a message to be bounced,
seems to me like a really bad idea, especially since it should only
ever be applied to messages that were locally authored. Maybe this
would mean storing with the locally recorded message a little bit of
metadata suggesting that Mutt generated an alternative part for this
message when it was sent?

Yeah, this can get ugly fast, and maybe the right way forward is
instead to store the generated content when saving a message
locally, but to teach Mutt to discard any multipart/alternative
non-text/plain part when reusing a message as a template, similarly
to how that part is discarded on error before it's returned to the
compose menu?

Best regards,

--
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but if we explore its paradoxes,
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-28 Thread José María Mateos


On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 10:40:16PM +, Chris Green wrote:

Isn't that handled by your terminal program?  Mine certainly allows
one to right click on any URL to open it.


Not if the URL spans several lines. I think it's a common issue across 
several terminal programs and last time I read about it I think it's due 
to the way mutt handles URLs, but perhaps I'm mistaken.


--
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-28 Thread Chris Green

On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 06:33:19PM -0400, José María Mateos wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 11:11:31PM +0100, Matthias Apitz wrote:
> > Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they are?
> > I speak only for my own interests (as I said: I do not need this).
> 
> Talking for myself, I really don't need point 1 (composing of HTML
> messages), but number 2, opening links in an easy way, would be a nice to
> have. I can always user urlview or send the HTML file to Firefox, but any of
> these solutions is slower than simply being able to somehow tell mutt "open
> URL #12 from this e-mail", and have that sent to the web browser.
> 
Isn't that handled by your terminal program?  Mine certainly allows
one to right click on any URL to open it.

-- 
Chris Green

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-28 Thread José María Mateos


On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 11:11:31PM +0100, Matthias Apitz wrote:

Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they are?
I speak only for my own interests (as I said: I do not need this).


Talking for myself, I really don't need point 1 (composing of HTML 
messages), but number 2, opening links in an easy way, would be a nice 
to have. I can always user urlview or send the HTML file to Firefox, but 
any of these solutions is slower than simply being able to somehow tell 
mutt "open URL #12 from this e-mail", and have that sent to the web 
browser.


Cheers,

--
José María (Chema) Mateos || https://rinzewind.org/

Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-28 Thread martin f krafft


Regarding the following, written by "Matthias Apitz" on 2019-10-28 at 23:11 Uhr 
+0100:
Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they are? 
I speak only for my own interests (as I said: I do not need this).


Matthias, any such feature would of course be optional, and probably 
default to off for a long time, so you have nothing to worry about.


--
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they don't have to worry about answers."
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

El día lunes, octubre 28, 2019 a las 04:50:40p. m. -0500, Derek Martin escribió:

> > FWIW, I (as a mutt user for 15++ years) do not need this. Thanks
> 
> Perhaps not, but the fact that it keeps coming up here is pretty clear
> indication that it's a feature that would be useful to a lot of
> people...

Well, do you speak for you or for a 'lot of people'? Who they are?
I speak only for my own interests (as I said: I do not need this).

matthias
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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt

2019-10-28 Thread Derek Martin

On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 10:06:18PM +0100, Matthias Apitz wrote:
> El día lunes, octubre 28, 2019 a las 03:59:01p. m. -0500, Derek Martin 
> escribió:
> 
> > FWIW, my two biggest wishlist items for Mutt are:
> > 
> > 1. the ability to create and send at least simple HTML messages, with
> >or without multipart alternatives, specifically for basic text
> >formatting (bold, italics, color) and hypertext links.  [It's
> >expected that an external HTML editor would need to be spawned to
> >generate the HTML.  It makes sense to be able to specify a filter
> >to convert this to an alternative form for multipart.]
> > 
> > 2. The ability to natively display a subset of HTML (the same subset)
> >with the ability to trigger links to open in a browser (or perhaps
> >execute an arbitrary configured command).  Modern terminal windows
> >can handle all of the formatting required to do just this much...
> > 
> 
> FWIW, I (as a mutt user for 15++ years) do not need this. Thanks

Perhaps not, but the fact that it keeps coming up here is pretty clear
indication that it's a feature that would be useful to a lot of
people...

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Re: Creating HTML emails with mutt