Re: puzzling email (getting OT)
On 20 Oct 2011 Brian Bailey bbai...@argonet.co.uk wrote: [snip] It's a long time since I used Pluto, but my recollection is that it doesn't treat HTML attachments any differently to any other type of attachment: You double click on it, a temporary copy is saved and that's filer_run. It doesn't parse the HTML in any way to see if any other attached files are needed by it, so they aren't saved alongside it - and therefore, as you say, the images references aren't rewritten. The bottom line, for users of Pluto, is that if you want to see attached images displayed in the HTML, you'll need to save and manually edit. (Remote images should be fine, of course). Vince, I should be glad of further clarification. My understanding is that MessengerPro doesn't behave significantly differently from Pluto when it comes to handling HTML, but maybe I'm out of date because MessengerPro has been subject to further development whereas Pluto hasn't. I see that you use the former and should be interested to learn if that too is subject to the same problems the affect Pluto, please. It may well be crunch time for me entailing a reluctant swap to MessengerPro. MPro show HTML e-mails as an attempt to render the HTML in the body of the message (usually quite a bit of a mess), with the HTML as an attachment. You can then click on the attachment to load it into a browser. It's a long time since I used Pluto, so I can't remember if it does that; I do remember control-G to load the HTML into the message window, and if MPro can do that, I haven't found out how. One thing that MPro does, and I don't think Pluto does, is that if you reply to or froward an HTML message, no matter if there are graphics as attachments as well as the HTML, the resulting message is received on the Dark Side as a standard HTML message. I haven't been able to check this myself, but I've never had the usual Windows-users' whinge that they can't read the message, as one gets when one replies bottom-posted :-) Anyway this is getting off-topic here; should it be continued on the MPro list? With best wishes, Peter. -- Peter \ / zfc Lu \ Prestbury, Cheltenham, Glos. GL52 and \/ ____ \ England. family / / \ | | |\ | / _ \ http://pnyoung.orpheusweb.co.uk / \__/ \_/ | \| \__/ \__ pnyo...@ormail.co.uk
Re: puzzling email
In article mpro.lt9ogc00bji230270.vi...@softrock.co.uk, Vince M Hudd vi...@softrock.co.uk wrote: The bottom line, for users of Pluto, is that if you want to see attached images displayed in the HTML, you'll need to save and manually edit. (Remote images should be fine, of course). I use !Pluto I often receive attachments, usually jokes, where I see one attached file with an HTML file type and a number of JPEGs, sometimes GIFFs. I double-click on the HTML and a browser, Fresco of Netsurf, whichever has been seen by the filer, loads and displays the HTML file with all the images in the right place. No need for an intermediate save operation -- Stuart Winsor Only plain text for emails http://www.asciiribbon.org
Re: puzzling email (getting OT)
[snip] Anyway this is getting off-topic here; should it be continued on the MPro list? Not really, Peter. Well, not yet anyway! For a start I don't use MessengerPro. I suspected I would get a response similar to yours. The problem is that I frequently get messages that are treated by Pluto as HTML attachments, plus graphics files also as attachments. Most of these are dross and don't concern me too much, they just don't matter, but some are commercially important and I should very much like to see them rendered correctly when loaded into NetSurf, so it is functionally a cross application problem, as well as a cross platform problem. I got into a real tangle with a business person. Neither of us could read/render correctly each others HTML files, sent to and from each other via email, cross platform, and it mattered. The situation was extremely frustrating and was never resolved. Tempers were starting to get a bit frayed. Regards Brian
Re: puzzling email
lists stuartli...@orpheusinternet.co.uk wrote: In article mpro.lt9ogc00bji230270.vi...@softrock.co.uk, Vince M Hudd vi...@softrock.co.uk wrote: The bottom line, for users of Pluto, is that if you want to see attached images displayed in the HTML, you'll need to save and manually edit. (Remote images should be fine, of course). I use !Pluto I often receive attachments, usually jokes, where I see one attached file with an HTML file type and a number of JPEGs, sometimes GIFFs. I double-click on the HTML and a browser, Fresco of Netsurf, whichever has been seen by the filer, loads and displays the HTML file with all the images in the right place. No need for an intermediate save operation Okay. I'm sure it didn't do that when I was using it, so maybe that's been dealt with in an upgrade that came after I stopped. I'm not sure there were many, and I thought mainly bug fixes (the way I remember it working wasn't a bug, per se). Or maybe I'm just remembering wrongly. Either way, this is now off-topic. -- Soft Rock Software: http://www.softrock.co.uk Vince M Hudd: http://misc.vinceh.com/about-vinceh/ RISCOSitory: http://www.riscository.com
Re: puzzling email
Brian Bailey bbai...@argonet.co.uk wrote: [snip] [...] I see that you use [Messenger Pro] I use Messenger Pro for Windows, which is a different beast, so I'm afraid you'll have to ask someone else (and somewhere more appropriate) to find out how the RISC OS version handles HTML attachments. -- Soft Rock Software: http://www.softrock.co.uk Vince M Hudd: http://misc.vinceh.com/about-vinceh/ RISCOSitory: http://www.riscository.com
Re: puzzling email (getting OT)
In article 5225151bf7bbai...@argonet.co.uk, Brian Bailey bbai...@argonet.co.uk wrote: I got into a real tangle with a business person. Neither of us could read/render correctly each others HTML files, sent to and from each other via email, cross platform, and it mattered. ... but this is still the province of the mail reader/sender software and not a browser problem (unless the html contains important content as javascript which isn't being rendered). -- Chris Johnson
Re: puzzling email (getting OT)
On 20 Oct 2011 Brian Bailey bbai...@argonet.co.uk wrote: [snip] Anyway this is getting off-topic here; should it be continued on the MPro list? Not really, Peter. Well, not yet anyway! For a start I don't use MessengerPro. I suspected I would get a response similar to yours. The problem is that I frequently get messages that are treated by Pluto as HTML attachments, plus graphics files also as attachments. Most of these are dross and don't concern me too much, they just don't matter, but some are commercially important and I should very much like to see them rendered correctly when loaded into NetSurf, so it is functionally a cross application problem, as well as a cross platform problem. I got into a real tangle with a business person. Neither of us could read/render correctly each others HTML files, sent to and from each other via email, cross platform, and it mattered. The situation was extremely frustrating and was never resolved. Tempers were starting to get a bit frayed. Yes, as in the bit that is snipped, MPro seems to be able to reply to or forward HTML messages in a way that Windows users can read. It sounds as if this may be the deciding point. Best wishes, Peter. -- Peter \ / zfc Lu \ Prestbury, Cheltenham, Glos. GL52 and \/ ____ \ England. family / / \ | | |\ | / _ \ http://pnyoung.orpheusweb.co.uk / \__/ \_/ | \| \__/ \__ pnyo...@ormail.co.uk
List Focus [Was Re: puzzling email]
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:57:21AM +0100, Vince M Hudd wrote: Either way, this is now off-topic. Indeed it is. It was off topic about four mails in. Please don't sprawl your RISC OS discussions on this list. I'm sure there're places where you don't irritate many people while doing so. I've received complaints, so that thread stops now, or I start forcibly unsubscribing people. Keep the focus guys. Thanks, Daniel. -- Daniel Silverstone http://www.netsurf-browser.org/ PGP mail accepted and encouraged.Key Id: 3CCE BABE 206C 3B69
Re: puzzling email
I ran the html file which was with the message, which appears as an attchment, in !Pluto, in NetSurf. The BMP file was also an attachment to the message. NetSurf tried to load the file. End of. NetSurf has full support for BMP images. Thanks, John. Noted, but NetSurf clearly doesn't like this one. For us to be able to debug this issue, we need the following: 1) What filetype does Pluto give the BMP file? (69c) 2) Please email me the log file from NetSurf's attempt to load the HTML document in question OK, John I will re-run it and send logfile as requested. 3) Please email me both the HTML and BMP files in question Wilco. Bit busy at the moment, but will get back to you. Without _all_ of the above, there is precisely nothing we can do to help. So you /are/ regarding it as a bug. Thanks, Ditto! Brian
Re: puzzling email
I ran the html file which was with the message, which appears as an attchment, in !Pluto, in NetSurf. The BMP file was also an attachment to the message. NetSurf tried to load the file. End of. OK. But an html message or web page shouldn't contain BMP images. On what basis shouldn't it, please? It's the first time I've seen a BMP file employed in this way. If this is likely to become a more common procedure then surely NetSurf developers would wish to know, yes? I expect that Internet Explorer might open them, but then it'll handle URLs containing backslashes. So the problem lies with whatever lump of shit (Outlook Express?) sent the message. I'm not surprised that NetSurf barfed at it. Your correspondent could do with a little education too. Not my problem. It was commercial, thus drawing my attention to the event.
Re: puzzling email
... NetSurf, which has its own routines for BMP decoding[1]. Whatever ChangeFSI does is not going to affect NetSurf. However, the test that I did showed that with ImageFS2 running on the machine, its settings did affect what NetSurf did. I don't know enough about the mechanics to know whether would or would not be expected. Regards -- John Harrison Website http://jaharrison.me.uk
Re: puzzling email
In article 5223f8af84bbai...@argonet.co.uk, Brian Bailey bbai...@argonet.co.uk wrote: I ran the html file which was with the message, which appears as an attchment, in !Pluto, in NetSurf. The BMP file was also an attachment to the message. NetSurf tried to load the file. End of. OK. But an html message or web page shouldn't contain BMP images. On what basis shouldn't it, please? It's the first time I've seen a BMP file employed in this way. If this is likely to become a more common procedure then surely NetSurf developers would wish to know, yes? Like an Acorn Sprite, a BMP is an /uncompressed/ proprietary format so it is bad form to use them in web pages or in html emails. BMPs do work though, as every browser seems to be able to render them. Usually. Some web counters, for example, do use the BMP format but those are usually tiny files which arguably don't matter so much. http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutorials/web_graphics/article.php/3479931/Image-Formats.htm Perhaps in the hiatus caused by compuserve's proprietary stance about GIFs, and before PNGs were widespread, some people in fear of being sued for using GIF may have turned to BMP instead (they are most likely using windoze, after all). Sometimes they would have been better than 'the other choice': there is little worse than somebody using a heavily compressed JPEG for a graphic. Such as this: http://openads.webmarketingpublications.co.uk/www/delivery/ai.php?filename=stage_photography.jpgcontenttype=jpeg Blow that up and compare it to their graphic here: http://openads.webmarketingpublications.co.uk/www/delivery/ck.php?n=0ddb8d1 It would seem that one web advertising company applies terrible lossy compression to the ad you send them and makes your images look horrible. TBH it often doesn't really matter if BMPs are used unless fools send huge uncompressed photos in this way. You could be looking at a 30MB instead of a 0.5MB download but generally its nothing to get worked up about! I expect that Internet Explorer might open them, but then it'll handle URLs containing backslashes. So the problem lies with whatever lump of shit (Outlook Express?) sent the message. I'm not surprised that NetSurf barfed at it. If it was an HTML email then presumably the software simply embedded the image the user threw at it. Hardly the program's fault, or do you expect email software to process image file format translation to cope for people who don't know the 'rules' better? ;-) Your correspondent could do with a little education too. As could many Windoze Lusers. About everything. ;-D Not my problem. It was commercial, thus drawing my attention to the event. Would there be any point in telling a suit that he's sending out files in formats he /perhaps/ shouldn't? Only if you can tell him he's losing potential sales. Unfortunately there is no easy way (under RISC OS) to reliably create html attachments with embedded images which work in Pluto/NetSurf, without wrapping them up in a zip file. Merely attaching a web page and its images to a message doesn't work: the links in the HTML have to be correctly written and this is done by windoze and other software if it's used correctly. I suspect simple attachments were attempted by the sender. Not NetSurf's fault. Sorry for long post. -- Tim Hill .. www.timil.com
Re: puzzling email
On 18/10/2011 11:25, John Harrison wrote: ... NetSurf, which has its own routines for BMP decoding[1]. Whatever ChangeFSI does is not going to affect NetSurf. However, the test that I did showed that with ImageFS2 running on the machine, its settings did affect what NetSurf did. I don't know enough about the mechanics to know whether would or would not be expected. It is expected as ImageFS fundamentally affects the way foreign image files on disc are handled by applications. Without ImageFS, it is up to the individual application to decide if it can handle a foreign image file type, and then attempt to render it using its own code. With ImageFS, the application does not see a foreign image file, but a directory containing a sprite. When it loads this sprite ImageFS will attempt to convert the foreign format to a sprite, which the application can render using standard OS routines. In this case Pluto is saving the HTML and a BMP file from an email to a temporary directory, and NetSurf will attempt to load it when rendering the HTML. If ImageFS is active it will bypass NetSurfs BMP handling. Cheers -- David J. Ruck email: dr...@druck.org.uk phone: +44(0)7974 108301
Re: puzzling email
John-Mark Bell j...@netsurf-browser.org wrote: On Tue, 2011-10-18 at 07:37 +0100, Brian Bailey wrote: [HTML from an email renders without the BMP graphic] OK. So this has nothing to do with BMP images at all. The bitmap you sent me renders fine here. What is happening is that Pluto fails to rewrite the image reference in the HTML document, so NetSurf attempts to fetch a file that doesn't exist, and instead builds an error page, which then generates the BadType report. It's a long time since I used Pluto, but my recollection is that it doesn't treat HTML attachments any differently to any other type of attachment: You double click on it, a temporary copy is saved and that's filer_run. It doesn't parse the HTML in any way to see if any other attached files are needed by it, so they aren't saved alongside it - and therefore, as you say, the images references aren't rewritten. The bottom line, for users of Pluto, is that if you want to see attached images displayed in the HTML, you'll need to save and manually edit. (Remote images should be fine, of course). -- Soft Rock Software: http://www.softrock.co.uk Vince M Hudd: http://misc.vinceh.com/about-vinceh/ RISCOSitory: http://www.riscository.com
Re: puzzling email
In article 52240dc1act...@netsurf-browser.org, Michael Drake t...@netsurf-browser.org wrote: In article 522408c273bbai...@argonet.co.uk, Brian Bailey bbai...@argonet.co.uk wrote: OK. So this has nothing to do with BMP images at all. The bitmap you sent me renders fine here. It does here as well, in retrospect, in ChangeFSI, but originally I had no reason to do it that way. John-Mark meant it renders fine in NetSurf, which has its own routines for BMP decoding[1]. I was unaware of that. It would seem that applied to others, too. Whatever ChangeFSI does is not going to affect NetSurf. I never thought that it would. That was a discrete exercise in itself. [1] http://www.netsurf-browser.org/projects/libnsbmp/
Re: puzzling email
[biggish snip} Not my problem. It was commercial, thus drawing my attention to the event. Would there be any point in telling a suit that he's sending out files in formats he /perhaps/ shouldn't? Only if you can tell him he's losing potential sales. Well, in a round about way he was losing potential sales, but not for that reason. I had long ago decided that his product was a total pain. 8-) Unfortunately there is no easy way (under RISC OS) to reliably create html attachments with embedded images which work in Pluto/NetSurf, without wrapping them up in a zip file. Merely attaching a web page and its images to a message doesn't work: the links in the HTML have to be correctly written and this is done by windoze and other software if it's used correctly. I suspect simple attachments were attempted by the sender. Not NetSurf's fault. Sorry for long post. No worries, Tim. All grist to the mill.
Re: puzzling email
On 18/10/2011 19:46, Chris Young wrote: On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:43:01 +0100, John-Mark Bell wrote: What is happening is that Pluto fails to rewrite the image reference in the HTML document, so NetSurf attempts to fetch a file that doesn't exist, and instead builds an error page, which then generates the BadType report. Should NetSurf perhaps be returning a bad image image instead of an HTML error, if the request which causes the error to be generated was expecting an object of type image/* ? But if I understand the problem correctly, what is happening here is that with ImageFS active the file ADFS::$.Somewhere.Image/BMP is no longer a file, but a directory containing an sprite file. Therefore NetSurf isn't just getting a broken link or bad image format, but is being given a URL of a directory which is invalid HTML. Cheers ---David -- Email: dr...@druck.org.uk Phone: +44-(0)7974 108301
Re: puzzling email
On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:35:12 +0100, David J. Ruck wrote: On 18/10/2011 19:46, Chris Young wrote: On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:43:01 +0100, John-Mark Bell wrote: What is happening is that Pluto fails to rewrite the image reference in the HTML document, so NetSurf attempts to fetch a file that doesn't exist, and instead builds an error page, which then generates the BadType report. Should NetSurf perhaps be returning a bad image image instead of an HTML error, if the request which causes the error to be generated was expecting an object of type image/* ? But if I understand the problem correctly, what is happening here is that with ImageFS active the file ADFS::$.Somewhere.Image/BMP is no longer a file, but a directory containing an sprite file. Therefore NetSurf isn't just getting a broken link or bad image format, but is being given a URL of a directory which is invalid HTML. I was referring to the case where ImageFS wasn't being used, and NetSurf was legitimately reading corrupt or missing files. If you are running patches that transpose files into directories containing other files, then quite frankly I'm surprised it works at all. Chris
Re: puzzling email
On 18 Oct 2011 Brian Bailey wrote: OK. But an html message or web page shouldn't contain BMP images. On what basis shouldn't it, please? It's the first time I've seen a BMP file employed in this way. If this is likely to become a more common procedure then surely NetSurf developers would wish to know, yes? I think that one's been answered for you. If you want to be sure that the majority of browsers can display your images stick to GIF, JPEG and PNG. I now realise that NetSurf does render BMPs so I don't know why it doesn't like yours. -- Richard Porterhttp://www.minijem.plus.com/ mailto:r...@minijem.plus.com I don't want a user experience - I just want stuff that works.
Re: puzzling email
On 19 Oct 2011 Richard Porter wrote: On 18 Oct 2011 Brian Bailey wrote: OK. But an html message or web page shouldn't contain BMP images. On what basis shouldn't it, please? It's the first time I've seen a BMP file employed in this way. If this is likely to become a more common procedure then surely NetSurf developers would wish to know, yes? I think that one's been answered for you. If you want to be sure that the majority of browsers can display your images stick to GIF, JPEG and PNG. I now realise that NetSurf does render BMPs so I don't know why it doesn't like yours. I've now read the explanation! -- Richard Porterhttp://www.minijem.plus.com/ mailto:r...@minijem.plus.com I don't want a user experience - I just want stuff that works.
Re: puzzling email
In article 5223956cc4bbai...@argonet.co.uk, Brian Bailey bbai...@argonet.co.uk wrote: I just got an email from i4imaging which included a file oleO.bmp which NetSurf didn't like very much declaring BadType as it was fetching and processing. Said file didn't seem to render. Are bmp file a no go area, perhaps? A BMP file made with DPIngScan loads fine, so your file is probably faulty - or, as sometimes happens, has the wrong file extension perhaps (?). My BMP file starts with the characters 'BM' as viewed in a text editor. John
Re: puzzling email
On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 04:10:32PM +0100, Brian Bailey wrote: John I just got an email from i4imaging which included a file oleO.bmp which NetSurf didn't like very much declaring BadType as it was fetching and processing. Said file didn't seem to render. Are bmp file a no go area, perhaps? A BMP file made with DPIngScan loads fine, so your file is probably faulty - or, as sometimes happens, has the wrong file extension perhaps (?). My BMP file starts with the characters 'BM' as viewed in a text editor. Thanks for that. It does indeed start with 'BM' but I'm mostly sure that it wasn't generated with DPIngScan. Bound to be from the dark side, really, but it does beg the question how many other BadFile types might there be lurking out there? I've had something similar happen before but ignored it! Brian It is most likely that your application has saved the bitmap with a data filetype. NetSurf (correctly) converts the RO data filetype to the application/octet-stream MIME type which will not be considered as anything beyond binary data that cannot be interpreted. Additionally if the bitmap is small you might try opening a bug on the bugtracker and placing it there to be examined as without it no-one can make any sensible determination. And *not* specific to this report, just using it as an opportunity: Please, PLEASE, there are only a very small number of use working on NetSurf. Can users read http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html and follow its advice. Also http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html is worth a read but be aware of the offensive language in that one. We welcome bug reports, however, hand-wavy reports take a disproportionately large amount of time to answer so you run the risk of simply never receiving a reply. -- Regards Vincent
Re: puzzling email
My BMP file starts with the characters 'BM' as viewed in a text editor. It does indeed start with 'BM' but I'm mostly sure that it wasn't generated with DPIngScan. Bound to be from the dark side, really, but it does beg the question how many other BadFile types might there be lurking out there? It's not a 'bad file type' any more that DOC is a bad file type. BMP is a Windows Bit MaP file. It's not very efficient, but nor is a SpriteFile. If you can't read that file, then either the file is corrupt (easy enough with e-mail) or you haven't got ImageFS (or whatever you use) set up to convert BMP files. Regards -- John Harrison Website http://jaharrison.me.uk
Re: puzzling email
On 17 Oct 2011 Brian Bailey wrote: I just got an email from i4imaging which included a file oleO.bmp which NetSurf didn't like very much declaring BadType as it was fetching and processing. Said file didn't seem to render. Are bmp file a no go area, perhaps? Could that be because NetSurf is a web browser and isn't designed to handle Windows BMP files? Why were you trying to load it into NetSurf? Wouldn't an image processing app like !DPlngScan be more appropriate? -- Richard Porterhttp://www.minijem.plus.com/ mailto:r...@minijem.plus.com I don't want a user experience - I just want stuff that works.
Re: puzzling email
On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 21:56 +0100, Brian Bailey wrote: I ran the html file which was with the message, which appears as an attchment, in !Pluto, in NetSurf. The BMP file was also an attachment to the message. NetSurf tried to load the file. End of. NetSurf has full support for BMP images. For us to be able to debug this issue, we need the following: 1) What filetype does Pluto give the BMP file? 2) Please email me the log file from NetSurf's attempt to load the HTML document in question 3) Please email me both the HTML and BMP files in question Without _all_ of the above, there is precisely nothing we can do to help. Thanks, John-Mark.
Re: puzzling email
On 17 Oct 2011 John-Mark Bell wrote: NetSurf has full support for BMP images. You're right it does! -- Richard Porterhttp://www.minijem.plus.com/ mailto:r...@minijem.plus.com I don't want a user experience - I just want stuff that works.
Re: puzzling email
On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:19:56 +0100, Richard Porter wrote: On 17 Oct 2011 Brian Bailey wrote: I ran the html file which was with the message, which appears as an attchment, in !Pluto, in NetSurf. The BMP file was also an attachment to the message. NetSurf tried to load the file. End of. OK. But an html message or web page shouldn't contain BMP images. I expect that Internet Explorer might open them Actually BMP files are pretty well supported by web browsers - presumably mostly because favicons started out using BMP or ICO files. Wikipedia has a reasonable table although the BMP column is incomplete (NetSurf entry needs filling in!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers#Image_format_support I'd agree that BMP is an odd choice though... I'm not surprised that NetSurf barfed at it. NetSurf's BMP support is very complete/compatible from what I've seen. It's certainly much better than the rubbish which comes with AmigaOS :) (fortunately easily replaced with libnsbmp code) Chris
