Re: [Pan-users] Reading an HTML posting when using 'old' Pan

[Duncan]

Steven D'Aprano posted on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:33:08 +1100 as excerpted:

> Duncan wrote:
>> Rui Maciel posted on Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:07:01 +0000 as excerpted:
>> 
>>> On 02/09/2012 12:34 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>>>> I really don't understand the choice of displaying HTML attachments
>>>> in-line as raw text. It seems to be saying "Screw you, I dislike HTML
>>>> posts and so will deliberately make them as obnoxious and annoying as
>>>> possible in the hope that Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, IBM, etc. will
>>>> change their mind about supporting HTML mail in their mail clients".
>>>> As if that's ever going to happen.
>>> Do you happen to know any Usenet standard that supports HTML?
>> 
>> Note that what he said doesn't /necessarily/ mean it must be displayed
>> as fully-parsed HTML.  There's a couple other options as well.
> 
> Good grief. I certainly didn't intend to suggest that Pan provide its
> own HTML rendering engine! If I did, I apologize for the confusion.

LOL!  It was ambiguous, but I originally chose not to interpret it that 
way.  However, it seems a lot of folks did, and I simply pointed out that 
didn't have to be the case.

>> One option would be to simply treat HTML parts as attachments.
> 
> I thought that's what I was suggesting.

Indeed.  That's how my first reply took it, as well.  But...

>> Yet another option, and the way claws-mail handles html, is to simply
>> strip out the html tags, leaving only the plain text.  I know how well
>> that works because I recently switched to claws-mail (from kmail, when
>> it akonadified) as my mail client, in part BECAUSE it only displays
>> plain text.  (It also has the open in browser functionality mentioned
>> above, but I have that option turned off.)
> 
> The mutt email client passes HTML to links, which generates the plain
> text view. It works very well, and avoids re-inventing the wheel.

It's an interesting idea that wouldn't make links a compile-time linked-
in dependency, only a run-time recommend.  If it was configurable, people 
could choose to pass it to something else instead.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman