HTML mail [was Re: FEL was Re: Hi]

Marko Vojinovic vvmarko at gmail.com
Mon Aug 9 02:12:38 UTC 2010


On Monday, August 09, 2010 00:29:23 Tim wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-08-08 at 15:30 +0100, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> > But this is just a declaration. The message doesn't actually contain
> > any html code, AFAICS. Things like <head>, <body>, and other tags.
> 
> A HTML message section doesn't actually have to have any HTML tags, just
> needs to be treated as if it might.  i.e. Any HTML elements that are
> found are parsed as per HTML rules, and the content treated the same as
> if it were being parsed as HTML.  e.g. All white space condensed to just
> one white space, line endings ignored, etc.  The head and body tags can
> be present, or just presumed to be present in the right place for them.
> Likewise for other tags.

So you are saying that I can write just a plain text message, label it as 
being html in the header, and the typical mail reader is going to pretend that 
any/all missing html tags are there, and then render and display the message 
as html? Well, I wasn't aware that mail readers got that sophisticated. Can 
this behavior be turned off? I would guess yes, but... :-)
 
> The original message HTML content had a few line breaks (BR tags)
> inserted, to break the text in the desired places, but let line wrapping
> fit the width of your viewing pane.  And had a few character entities
> (#39).

Yes, that seems to be the main issue, I didn't find any of those in the OP's 
message, as I received it. But I guess there is more to a mail reader than 
meets the eye here. I'll take a more serious look at my KMail preferences.

> The original post's scant use of HTML, only using the most basic, and
> not bloating it with numerous nested tags and pointless ones (e.g. font
> sizes all over the place, tables inside tables, etc.), make it one of
> the better examples of HTML in an email.  But that seems to be the
> exception to the rule, people using dislike HTML for good reasons
> (bloated content, quoting difficulty, security hazards, etc.).

I see your point. But you know what they say, once you let the cat out of the 
bag, ... ;-) I still believe it is a good idea to keep the e-mail as plain 
text. The bad html e-mail habits seem to outweigh it's good (ie. reasonable) 
use as you described above.

Best, :-)
Marko






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