On Wednesday 06 May 2015 13:26:10 Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 12:23:58PM +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > Yesterday I filed a wish-bug.  I am very conscious of what is involved
> > and of how precious the developer effort and time is.  The person who
> > told me to ask said that it would be quick and easy, but quick and easy
> > are both very subjective words.
>
> Here is the bug report again:
>
> http://bugs.pearsoncomputing.net/show_bug.cgi?id=2440
>
> Unfortunately, for some reason I can't view the screen shot, but I think
> I know what you are referring to.
>
> I think you mean that Kmail displays HTML emails as raw HTML code, like
> the "View Source" in a web browser, full of < > tags and other
> formatting information. Is that what you mean?

Yes, that is exactly what I mean.

> I must say I've never noticed that when I was using Kmail, but I'm
> currently using mutt almost exclusively.
>
> It might be helpful to mention how mutt deals with HTML mail. Of course,
> being mutt, nearly everything is configurable, but this is how I have it
> set up: when an email contains both a plain text version of the message
> and a html version of the message, mutt will display the plain text
> version.

I have KMail set to do that, but even then I sometimes get gobbledy-gook.  
Here is a short extract from teh _plain_ _text_ part of a multipart email 
from a local supermarket:

"Morrisonsbody { width: 100%; } /* Outlook link fix */ #outlook a 
{padding:0;} /* Hotmail background & line height fixes */ .ExternalClass 
{width:100% !important;} .ExternalClass, .ExternalClass p, .ExternalClass 
b, .ExternalClass span, .ExternalClass font, .ExternalClass 
td, .ExternalClass div, .ExternalClass br {line-height: 100%;} /* Image "

> But if the email only has a html version, mutt calls out to the "links"
> text-based web browser, and gets it to dump the html message to a plain
> text version. links knows how to extract the message content, ignoring
> irrelevant tags and formatting information. "lynx" is another text-only
> browser capable of a similar html-to-text dump. In either case, all you
> see is the plain text, with no <tags>.
>
> Is that what you are after?
 
YES!!!!  I hadn't realised taht it could be done.

> My own feeling is that any graphical email client should show the plain
> text message (when available), and if not available, you should have a
> choice between showing the html message either formatted and rendered in
> all it's glory (or horror), or as plain text with the formatting
> removed.

That would be GREAT!!!  That is what I would like for KMail, now I know that 
it can be done.   That exactly is what I am requesting in my wish-bug.

Lisi