Version:           1.8.2 (using KDE 3.4.2 Level "b" , SUSE 9.3 UNSUPPORTED)
Compiler:          gcc version 3.3.5 20050117 (prerelease) (SUSE Linux)
OS:                Linux (i686) release 2.6.11.4-21.8-default

Hi,

when writing a mail and deciding I want to underline and/or emphasize some text, I switch to HTML mode. However, this HTML mode lacks certain features, which cause the mail to display differently in KMail's viewer, compared to the editor.
This is not what the user expects and is therefore bad for usability.

I would like to try to code this myself, but I would need somebody to point me to the place in KMail's source code where the text-to-HTML conversion is done.


Here's my list:

1. The automatic line breaks for paragraphs are gone.
   The editor shows them, the viewer does not.

Suggestion: Flow text in the editor as well, when the user switches to HTML mode. Just like in any other HTML editor.

2. KMail inserts "<p> ... </p>" whenever the users uses ENTER. 
   This causes KMail to insert lots and lots of empty
   "<p></p>" HTML paragraphs in text that has been formatted
   in paragraphs with empty lines in between.
   However, the "<p>" tag already *contains* spaces in
   between.

Suggestion: Convert single linebreaks to "<br/>", double linebreaks to "<p>..</p>", and n-tuple linebreaks to "n" <br/> tags.
Optionally, use "<p>..</p>" only for paragraphs that *would* have had line breaks inserted in the plain text version (ie not for single-line paragraphs).

3. KMail does not color, or emphasize, quoted text any more.
   What's more, it separates each line of quoted text into
   its own "<p>...</p>" tags. This rips the text apart, makes
   it harder to distinguish from non-quoted text (because
   the color is missing) and thus destroys legibility.

Suggestions:

a. Prepend quoted text like other GUI editors do.
   Something like "<p style='border-left: solid 5px $COLOR;
   padding-left: 10px; color: $COLOR'> ... </p>
   where $COLOR is taken from the KMail configuration.
   This works also for several levels of quoting.
b. If there is no empty line between quoted and non-quoted
   text, maybe "<div style='...'>" can be used instead.
c. Keep linebreaks within quoted text, use "<br/>".
   It is probably far too dangerous to reformat quoted text.


4. (Wish) Replace "*", "/" and "_" tags commonly used in
   email for emphasis with appropriate HTML formatting.
   This should work in both directions, and can possibly be 
   done with a regular expression:

   $text =~ #\b\*(\w+)\*\b#<b>$1</b>#g;
   $text =~ #\b_(\w+)_\b#<i>$1</i>#g;
   $text =~ #\b/(\w+)/\b#<u>$1</u>#g;

   (which may need to be more sophisticated... just an idea)


If this sounds feasible, I will prepare a couple examples displaying these bugs/issues and how possible solutions could look like, and I'd be willing to try and code them myself.

Please respond.
Thanks :-)


Jens