Bug 4202

*** Bug 49846 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 48409 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I wish I could vote against this wish.

Why? Just because you never use a feature or never want to doesn't mean 
thousands of others opinions are wrong. 

*I* would actually settle quite comfortably for "merely" being able to manually set 
the mimetype - I very rarely have a desire to send HTML mail, so not having a 
pretty GUI for adding HTML tags, etc, isn't an issue for me, but without the ability 
to at LEAST set the mimetype to "text/html" on-the-fly I can't even manually 
send HTML mail. 
 
In addition, being able to set the mail to "text/html" but having to put the HTML 
together "by hand" would still discourage overuse of it... 

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

> In addition, being able to set the mail to "text/html" but having to put
> the HTML together "by hand" would still discourage overuse of it...

I don't see why people are so against HTML mail. Sure having images and
flying bats and whatnot is not desirable / needed most of the time, but I see
no problem with adding a <b>bold></b> or <u>underline</u> to important text,
or using <li> to enumerate some lists, or using a <table> to show some data. All
these things are standard in the workplace today.

This WYSIWYG editting is really a feature for the "masses". The outlook crowds.
I see a lot of people using html formatted mail in my environment. So I think
a lot of people expect it from their mailclient. 
Isn't integration with kword an idea for this? I thought outlook 2000 uses word 
for this?

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On March 31, 2003 07:51 pm, you wrote:
> Isn't integration with kword an idea for this? I thought outlook 2000 uses
> word for this?

Outlook *can* use word for super advanced RTF, but it also has basic RTF
(most all anyone uses) directly in the client. QTextEdit / KTextEdit (the edit
widget used by KMail ) supports full RTF editing anyways, including even tables
and images. So changing the widget isn't even needed.

What has advanced text editing to do with being a feature for the masses? If
it's anything it's a potential annoyance for the masses unless they have an
ability to turn off html. Emails are intended as plain text messages, everything
else needs to be attached with specific mime types. And it shouldn't be hard to
attache html files to emails in KMail if one really wants to do that, so what?
KDE lacking a WYSIWYG html editor? Then please create one, but please let it not
be KMail.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On March 31, 2003 11:09 pm, you wrote:
> What has advanced text editing to do with being a feature for the masses?

I define a "feature for the masses" as "a feature the masses use", and HTML
email certainly falls into this category, like it or not.

> If it's anything it's a potential annoyance for the masses unless they have
> an ability to turn off html. 

I don't know of a single Email client lacking the ability to turn it off, including
Outlook.

>Emails are intended as plain text messages,
> everything else needs to be attached with specific mime types. 

Asking people to create separate HTML documents and attach them to Emails
just to add a table or bold text is not only foolish, it is short sighted. When every
other major player in the graphical Email client market supports composing HTML
mail in-line, and KMail does not, it makes it look crippled.

> I define a "feature for the masses" as "a feature the masses use", and HTML
> email certainly falls into this category, like it or not.

Html emails are a feature used by the masses since the email client used by the
masses has sending html emails activated by default last time I checked.

> I don't know of a single Email client lacking the ability to turn it off, 
> including Outlook.

By "ability to turn off html" I meant the emails people receive. Last time I
checked there was no way to disable html in received emails in Outlook/Outlook
Express, unless you used some inofficial "plugin" few people even know about.

> Asking people to create separate HTML documents and attach them to Emails
> just to add a table or bold text is not only foolish, it is short sighted. 
> When every other major player in the graphical Email client market supports 
> composing HTML mail in-line, and KMail does not, it makes it look crippled. 

Let us approach this the other way around: What features do you actually miss by
not having the ability to send html emails? Maybe as conclusion to that we will
need to extend all instant messengers and text editors accordingly as well...

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On April 1, 2003 12:11 am, you wrote:
> Html emails are a feature used by the masses since the email client used by
> the masses has sending html emails activated by default last time I
> checked.

Actually, it is more of the fact that they set colors in their signatures, and bold
text, and make tables, etc. HTML email is used by many, many, many people,
both in their daily work and at home.

> By "ability to turn off html" I meant the emails people receive. Last time
> I checked there was no way to disable html in received emails in
> Outlook/Outlook Express, unless you used some inofficial "plugin" few
> people even know about

When was the last time you saw someone using Outlook at work who said
"Gee, I wish I could turn off this HTML email so that I could not read this
message my boss sent me in the format he wanted me to see it in". 

Regardless of this, it is a non-issue since KMail has this ability.

> Let us approach this the other way around: What features do you actually
> miss by not having the ability to send html emails? Maybe as conclusion to
> that we will need to extend all instant messengers and text editors
> accordingly as well...

Well, ICQ, AIM, Jabber, MSN Messanger, Yahoo IM, *ALL* support RTF messages,
and KDE already has many RTF text editors, so what is your point here? 

Do you think KWord should be removed in favor of KVim as well? After all, whats the
point of all that silly markup? All it is is a distraction, "it's a feature for the masses since
the editors enable the formatting by default". Let's just hand in plain .txt files printed in
fixed point for our resumes from now on.

Ok,

i'm one of the voters for this feature and the reason why is very easy.
Sometimes i'd like to write a html mail (usually sending  it to friends as a
joke). Kmail is the best integrated mail tool into KDE and it does not support it.

Therefore i wish it would. So it is simple. I don't use KMail because of this
possibility and with this feature i will use it.

Yes, i know that there are certain ways to use KMail and work around, but i'm
lazy...

>I define a "feature for the masses" as "a feature the masses use", and HTML
>email certainly falls into this category, like it or not.

Exactly! I personally don't use the marking up features of mail clients. For me 
personally kmail already has everything I want. But if the aim of kmail is to 
be a 100% alternative to outlook/eudora mail clients, with other words to be 
a  "mainstream" mail client for the masses, then WYSIWYG editing 
is an absolute must! It's used by too many people to be ingored.
If I look to my personal situation. I know 25% of my mail contacts wouldn't 
even think about switching to kmail because they seem to have developed this 
strange habbit of using wysiwyg mail editing.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail         

>
>I define a "feature for the masses" as "a feature the masses use", and HTML
>email certainly falls into this category, like it or not.

Exactly! I personally don't use the marking up features of mail clients. 
For me personally kmail
already has everything I want. But if the aim of kmail is to be a 100% 
alternative to outlook/eudora
mail clients, with other words to be a  "mainstream" mail client for the 
masses, then WYSIWYG editing
is an absolute must! It's used by too many people to be ingored.
If I look to my personal situation. I know 25% of my mail contacts would't 
even think about switching
to kmail because they seem to have developed this strange habbit of using 
wysiwyg mail editing.

I don't mind the absence of html composition.  However, html messages forwarded 
Inline do not appear properly on the recipients email client, due to the fact that kmail 
treats this as Plain Text in the forwarded email.  The client sees the html code, not the 
message.  The alternative is to forward as an attachment.  I don't like to forward emails 
as attachments as this creates the same infuriating nest of emails created by AOL. 

Maybe HTML mails are not very useful.
But sometimes there are.

Add an option to set rtf editing or plain text editing for people who dislike 
this idea...

But don't be too short-sighted, and refuse this feature because you don't use 
it !

oh my! KDE 3.2 work schedule released, and still i can not see anything about proper HTML 
mail support. 
 
You're trying to create the best mail program out there to integrate it into KDE, do you? Well 
then you might be a bit disappointed that many users out there use other E-Mail clients not 
simply because they LIKE them more, simply just because they have good HTML support! I'm 
using evolution now since last year, because i need this feature and you just don't give a damn 
about trying to implement it! 
 
Are you trying to hold KMail down or what?! For one moment, just look outside the Linux 
professional world, and recognize how often HTML mail is used... 

Sorry for my comments...but @Arwed Starke : 
You can vote/comment here for a feature. If you think another mailprogram is better, 
then use that one. If you think kmail should have this, code it. 
But don't mess up things with your kind of comment. At least I don't need it. Be 
constructive. 
 
With kind regards, 
Edwin 

While his attitude is way out of line, some Arwed's points are totally valid. This bug is  
the 3rd most voted for in Kmail, and compared to the two above it it would be nearly  
trivial to implement, yet the attitude by some is almost hostile against the feature.  
 
All that needs to be done is to use the KRichTextEditor part and use that as the 
editing component if HTML email composing is selected. While this wouldn't give you  
tables/images etc, it would give you bold, italic, underline, fonts, and colors, which is 
all 99.99% of the people want. I could code it myself in one night probably if I  
had time on my hands and knew the KMail code.  
  
I know people want to use KafkaPart for the editor once it is available, but until this  
time I think KRichTextEditor is a more than adequate solution, and if done properly  
using KParts Kafka could probably just be dropped in with no problem whenever it is  
ready.  

Everyone is free to append a proposed patch as attachment to this report. 

Sorry I've hit the wrong tone. I've been a bit upset because KDE 3.2 is planned to be released 
until the end of the year, and if KMail still does not support HTML mail until then, then probably 
never ;)  Sorry for that. 
 
But what i wrote above is my true opinion. KDE integrates so much that makes a desktop 
user's life comfortable and pleasant, why not a fully integrated mail client WITH oh so common 
HTML support :) 
 
Of course it should be off by default, but there for everyone (not few) who need it. 
 
ps.: sorry but i can't code it myself. 

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

> All that needs to be done is to use the KRichTextEditor part and
> use that as the editing component if HTML email composing is
> selected. While this wouldn't give you tables/images etc, it would
> give you bold, italic, underline, fonts, and colors, which is all
> 99.99% of the people want. I could code it myself in one night
> probably if I had time on my hands and knew the KMail code.

This isn't necessary, it's not that hard. The current KMail editor 
already supports bold, italic, underline, fonts, colors and tables 
because it's based on qtextedit.

All that needs to be done is adding a few buttons to the composer GUI 
and writing a html generator. There's even code in qt for generating 
an html subset (qml) from a label that already does this.

I guess this would take an average KDE programmer less that a day to 
create a preliminary PATCH. I could certainly do it that quickly.

But I won't do that now because I said I would do bug:50997 and that's 
got 645 votes, and bug:4202 only has 447 [1].

If you can get a thousand votes on 4202 from kde.org addresses before 
KDE 3.2 feature freeze I'll put my time where my mouth is implement 
it and send a patch to the KMail list. Otherwise I think people are 
just whining and they don't really care that much.

[1] kontact.org/votes.php

Don.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On June 19, 2003 02:37 am, you wrote:
> This isn't necessary, it's not that hard. The current KMail editor
> already supports bold, italic, underline, fonts, colors and tables
> because it's based on qtextedit.
>
> All that needs to be done is adding a few buttons to the composer GUI
> and writing a html generator. There's even code in qt for generating
> an html subset (qml) from a label that already does this.

Yes but those buttons are already in KRichTextEditorPart. All the KRichTextEditorPart
is is a KTextEdit with all the buttons and menu items for bold, italic, fonts, colors,
etc. in a toolbar and menu items so that coders don't have to re-code this stuff over
and over again. Duplicating all this in KMail would be a waste of effort IMO when its
what the part is designed for.

The part is not included in the basic build right now because it is missing a couple
needed features, namely find and find and replace.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

> Are you trying to hold KMail down or what?! For one moment, just look
> outside the Linux professional world, and recognize how often HTML mail is
> used...

While I couldn't care less pro or con this feature, as long as I can turn it 
off, I would like to reply that Yes, it's used a lot outside the unix world.. 
and 99% of it goes straight to my spamfolder. (and that 1% is usualy nothing 
more than a silly, and at 1600x1200 resolution unreadable, font in some candy 
sweet color).

Anyhow, whoever feels like implementing this, please do it through proper 
mime-chunks so there's always a text piece and most of all, don't forget the 
option to turn it off..

Thanks,
 Gerhard

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

> Yes but those buttons are already in . All the KRichTextEditorPart
> KRichTextEditorPart is is a KTextEdit with all the buttons and menu items
> for bold, italic, fonts, colors, etc. in a toolbar and menu items so that
> coders don't have to re-code this stuff over and over again. Duplicating
> all this in KMail would be a waste of effort IMO when its what the part is
> designed for.

Hi!
I'm interested in developing HTML support for KMail!
Where can I find KRichTextEditorPart ?
I've KDE 3.1 but I don't have these part installed.
It's a sperimental part?

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On June 20, 2003 03:41 pm, you wrote:

> Hi!
> I'm interested in developing HTML support for KMail!
> Where can I find KRichTextEditorPart ?
> I've KDE 3.1 but I don't have these part installed.
> It's a sperimental part?

Its in KDE base but not installed by default, because it needs
find and find+replace added in, and no one is really the maintainer
of it.

You can build it by cd'ing to krichtexteditor in kdebase and typing make.

One other thing: if you are willing to develop this, I'd recommend you join the 
mailing lists and use CVS HEAD for your work. 

Since when does KMail not feature WYSYWIG editing?  
It does! You only don't have the ability to include this html rubbish!  
And saying that all the outlook users need and want html does not 
correspond with my experience. Whenever I tell people, who sent  
html-only messages to me, to please turn off this annoying html-stuff,  
they ask "html? what's that?" and "how do I turn it off?".  
So, the fact that 90% of the people use html in their mail is not because  
they need it, but because they don't know what is happening inside their 
mail programs. And as html is on by default (against the nettiquette - or has 
that been changed in the meantime) they use it without even knowing.  
  
For the people, who want to include tables and (fancy) enumerations (no  
problem to do that in ascii) and such stuff, why don't you just start your  
favourite html-editor/office/whatsoever, write your important mail with 
tables and pictures and enumerations and just attach the html to the mail with  
probably no further ascii content.  
  
Actually, I am not strictly against including html-creation into kmail as 
an option, but it's a lot of effort for the developers with few added value.  
Actually such a feature would even help to further violate the 
nettiquette. And other than some people here seem to suggest: html display 
for reading html-mails is already included in kmail! 
  
As a compromise, how about a menu-entry and icon for starting an external  
html-editor for people who definately want to create html-emails? (Including  
the start of a warning-box, that tells newbies that they are about to violate  
the nettiquette and to produce unnecessary (in most cases) net-traffic and  
incompatible email formats.) 

I could not agree more! 
I have the same experience that people using MS mailers simply do not know what 
the mailer does. 

I don't like html mails either but I know it can be important for many people.

What about a quanta part? (the kafka integration is near and it can be amazing :-))

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On June 21, 2003 06:06 am, Volker Wedemeier wrote:
> 11:06 ------- Since when does KMail not feature WYSYWIG editing?
> It does! You only don't have the ability to include this html rubbish!
> And saying that all the outlook users need and want html does not
> correspond with my experience. Whenever I tell people, who sent
> html-only messages to me, to please turn off this annoying html-stuff,
> they ask "html? what's that?" and "how do I turn it off?".
> So, the fact that 90% of the people use html in their mail is not because
> they need it, but because they don't know what is happening inside their
> mail programs. And as html is on by default (against the nettiquette - or
> has that been changed in the meantime) they use it without even knowing.
>
> For the people, who want to include tables and (fancy) enumerations (no
> problem to do that in ascii) and such stuff, why don't you just start your
> favourite html-editor/office/whatsoever, write your important mail with
> tables and pictures and enumerations and just attach the html to the mail
> with probably no further ascii content.

This has to be the most ridiculous comment on this thread to far. You obviously
do not work in a coperate environment where an HTML signature is essential
and forced upon you by the marketing / PR departments for branding (which
is many many people.) You obvoiusly also have much more time on your hands
than me, if you have the time to fire up seperate editors and attach documents
etc etc if all you want to do is format some text in the form of a press release.

These type of features are demanded by companies. And I as an individual would
like the ability to *bold* some text as well. How does this do any harm to you? This
is why multipart messages were created in the first place. Honestly I do no grasp
why people are SO against this SIMPLE TO ADD feature. Just turn it off, you will still get
all the plain old text. KMail has supported multipart MIME forever.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On June 21, 2003 07:57 am, Jos

Hi Guys,

sure the Outlook people does'nt now that they are doing, but for me that does'nt
count. The KDE desktop is build for easy use, meaning that idiots with computers
should also able to work with it. And i can't see anything bad in supporting
HTML mails. Sure, for security reasons, there should'nt be any support of
JavaScript or even direct downloading URLs from the mail itself. 

But we are talking for some HTML tags, to get more beautiful mails for those
people who like that. They would'nt even make much <big>bigger</big> mails to send.

My wife is a secretary and she is used to use such features. Of course she
does'nt know what html is, but she knows when she want a line marked as a
headline or a word marked in italic. And she expext such features from a
mail-tool. In her point a view, a mail tool is a simple type of wordprocessing
tool, with the only difference to koffice, openopffice, MS Word... that it sends
the mail to her friends and collegues instead of printig and sending the letters.

Sorry, but if it's not a big deal to integrate this feature into KMail (as Jason
said) then integrate it and stop this stupid discussion. If you have good
reasons to do it not, then tell them to us and don't integrate it. But at this
point i can't see any good reason mentioned here. ("I'm not using it", is not
good reason from my point of view.)

And i don't like the idea of starting an external editor to write my mail. That
is not very comfortable and i could do it at this time already. I could write my
Mail in OpenOffice, export them as pdf and send them as a attachment for
example. But such a complicated way is also acceptable, for very special
reasons, like sending a beautiful invitation for your wedding.

I also think that at this time there is no other mail tool integrated in the KDE
 desktop like KMail is. Hows about the compramise, that you give the
possibillity to integrate other mail tools as good as Kmail?

I would do this code fix, if i could, but i'm not a c programmer. I could build
you a nice web application using perl and the apache or something like this, or
could write you some shell scripts. But the last time i build a c programm that
handles the GUI was on my Atari ST a long long time ago.

Curious to read your answers
Oliver

HTML mails make emails *more than twice* as big as before since for 
compability with non-HTML email readers a pure text version will need to be 
included in every email anyway. And as soon as someone wants to include 
background pictures with HTML we are talking about bloat. 
 
But as I wrote before already: Everyone who wants this feature is free to 
append a proposed patch as attachment to this report. No need to continue 
discussing this issue since imnsho all opinions from both sides got exchanged 
sufficiently already. 

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

> ------- Additional Comments From datschge@gmx.de  2003-06-21 19:23 -------
> HTML mails make emails *more than twice* as big as before since for
> compability with non-HTML email readers a pure text version will need to be
> included in every email anyway.

MORE THAN TWICE??? Holy crap! That  means that this 1856 byte email I just
got would be at least 4k in size!!! 

Give me a break. 

> And as soon as someone wants to include 
> background pictures with HTML we are talking about bloat.

Most all HTML emails with images are acrually links to images on the net. And
I don't think that the 1% of email users who use KDE is going to make a huge
impact on aggregate internet bandwidth either...

If you are so concerned about it, then don't use it.

> But as I wrote before already: Everyone who wants this feature is free to
> append a proposed patch as attachment to this report. No need to continue
> discussing this issue since imnsho all opinions from both sides got
> exchanged sufficiently already.

Exect a patch this week.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On Saturday 21 June 2003 14:30, Jason Keirstead wrote:
> Honestly I do no grasp why people are SO against this SIMPLE TO ADD
> feature. 

1. I don't think it's that easy to add. AFAIK KRichTextEditor misses a 
few features that the currently used editor widget has. The README 
mentions a few things.

2. You should talk about this with Zack (zack AT kde DOT org) because he 
said he would add support for multiple editor parts to KMail (including 
a RichText/HTML editor part).

3. You will have to maintain the code you provide, i. e. you will have 
to fix any problems that occur with it.

4. Under no circumstances KMail will send HTML-only messages.

5. I'm looking forward to your patch.

And on Saturday 21 June 2003 19:59, Jason Keirstead wrote:
> MORE THAN TWICE??? Holy crap! That  means that this 1856 byte email I
> just got would be at least 4k in size!!!
>
> Give me a break.

In my experience HTML messages are usually 4-10 times as large as plain 
text only messages. And yes, the difference matters if you receive 
hundreds of messages each day and have to pay per minute for your 
online time.

Regards,
Ingo

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On June 22, 2003 05:46 pm, you wrote:
> 1. I don't think it's that easy to add. AFAIK KRichTextEditor misses a
> few features that the currently used editor widget has. The README
> mentions a few things.
>
> 2. You should talk about this with Zack (zack AT kde DOT org) because he
> said he would add support for multiple editor parts to KMail (including
> a RichText/HTML editor part).

These two things contradict themselves. If Zack was already planning on
this then it is certainly do-able. And the work that needs to be done in
KRichTextEditor is minor., I already know what needs to be done, as I
was looking at taking it over 2 months ago.

> 4. Under no circumstances KMail will send HTML-only messages.

Whoever said this? Name one mail client that can send HTML only? I know
of none.

> In my experience HTML messages are usually 4-10 times as large as plain
> text only messages. And yes, the difference matters if you receive
> hundreds of messages each day and have to pay per minute for your
> online time.

As I said, what does this matter? Even if 100% of KMail users started using
HTML email for EVERYTHING it would only impact the Internet as a whole
by like 0.001 percent. 

Aside from that, it should be up to the sender if he wants his emails to be larger
and have nice formatting, it is not your place to dictate what things a user can't do
as a result of your preferences. If you don't like formatting and don't want to waste
your time downloading markup, then I suggest you invent a new mail protocol that
allows you to separate the markup from the text and convince everyone to use it.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On Monday 23 June 2003 01:26, Jason Keirstead wrote:
> On June 22, 2003 05:46 pm, you wrote:
> > 1. I don't think it's that easy to add. AFAIK KRichTextEditor
> > misses a few features that the currently used editor widget has.
> > The README mentions a few things.
> >
> > 2. You should talk about this with Zack (zack AT kde DOT org)
> > because he said he would add support for multiple editor parts to
> > KMail (including a RichText/HTML editor part).
>
> These two things contradict themselves. If Zack was already planning 
> on this then it is certainly do-able.

I don't see a contradiction. I said "it's not that easy" and "Zack ...". 
If it was easy then Zack would have already finished the work months 
ago.

> And the work that needs to be 
> done in KRichTextEditor is minor., I already know what needs to be
> done, as I was looking at taking it over 2 months ago.
>
> > 4. Under no circumstances KMail will send HTML-only messages.
>
> Whoever said this?

Nobody. But I just wanted to make sure that we agree.

> Name one mail client that can send HTML only? I know of none.

I didn't say "...will only send HTML messages", I said "...will send 
HTML-only messages" (i.e. messages with only a text/html message part 
but no corresponding text/plain message part).

> > In my experience HTML messages are usually 4-10 times as large as
> > plain text only messages. And yes, the difference matters if you
> > receive hundreds of messages each day and have to pay per minute
> > for your online time.
>
> As I said, what does this matter? Even if 100% of KMail users started
> using HTML email for EVERYTHING it would only impact the Internet as
> a whole by like 0.001 percent.

You want to misunderstand me, right? Of course it won't have much impact 
on the Internet since it's anyway swamped with up to 60% spam messages. 
But it will have an impact on people with a slow and expensive internet 
connection. But you couldn't care less, right?

> Aside from that, it should be up to the sender if he wants his emails
> to be larger and have nice formatting, it is not your place to
> dictate what things a user can't do as a result of your preferences.
> If you don't like formatting and don't want to waste your time
> downloading markup, then I suggest you invent a new mail protocol
> that allows you to separate the markup from the text and convince
> everyone to use it.

Ever heard of IMAP? ;-)

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

> > Name one mail client that can send HTML only? I know of none.
>
> I didn't say "...will only send HTML messages", I said "...will send
> HTML-only messages" (i.e. messages with only a text/html message part
> but no corresponding text/plain message part).

While I think that Outlook and Mozilla do give you the option to send HTML
only, I also know for a fact it is not the default for either of those clients, or
for any client.

> You want to misunderstand me, right? Of course it won't have much impact
> on the Internet since it's anyway swamped with up to 60% spam messages.
> But it will have an impact on people with a slow and expensive internet
> connection. But you couldn't care less, right?

Why are you talking about me? I have never sent and HTML formatted email
in my life.

This does not mean I think the feature should be absent however. If KMail is ever
to infiltrate the corperate and home user markets it *needs* these kinds of features.
Coperate networks with gigabit LANs do not care about measly kilobytes of traffic,
they care about getting their messages across as intended without having to teach
their secrataries IRC style *_/ markups.

The Kontact and calendaring integration is a good step forward, as is the Kolab
project. But it is not the end... stuff like rich text formatting of emails and signatures
is essential in order to compete with clients like Outlook and (buggy as it may be)
Evolution.

> > Aside from that, it should be up to the sender if he wants his emails
> > to be larger and have nice formatting, it is not your place to
> > dictate what things a user can't do as a result of your preferences.
> > If you don't like formatting and don't want to waste your time
> > downloading markup, then I suggest you invent a new mail protocol
> > that allows you to separate the markup from the text and convince
> > everyone to use it.
>
> Ever heard of IMAP? ;-)

Indeed, I did not know IMAP could do this, just read up on the RFC. This
MIME-IMB parts fetching is certainly interesting. I do not believe KMail supports
it right now. But if it did it would certainly eliminate this part of the argument.

Not to butt in, but... 
 
While I don't imagine too many people would settle for this as a "final" solution to the 
issue, I'd personally be quite content with nothing more than the ability to change the 
mime-type of the messages I'm sending from the editor window. 
 
How difficult/complicated would it be for someone to implement a drop-down 
mimetype selection box to the kmail editor interface? 

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On Monday 23 June 2003 23:25, Ingo "Kl

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On Monday 23 June 2003 23:40, Jason Keirstead wrote:
> > I didn't say "...will only send HTML messages", I said "...will
> > send HTML-only messages" (i.e. messages with only a text/html
> > message part but no corresponding text/plain message part).
>
> While I think that Outlook and Mozilla do give you the option to send
> HTML only, I also know for a fact it is not the default for either of
> those clients, or for any client.

That's interesting because occasionally I receive HTML-only message from 
Outlook users who are surprised when I tell them about it. They must 
have accidentally changed the config option.

> > You want to misunderstand me, right? Of course it won't have much
> > impact on the Internet since it's anyway swamped with up to 60%
> > spam messages. But it will have an impact on people with a slow and
> > expensive internet connection. But you couldn't care less, right?
>
> Why are you talking about me? I have never sent and HTML formatted
> email in my life.

I'm talking about you because you defend the HTML using people by saying 
that sending HTML messages doesn't have an impact. Obviously we 
disagree about this.

> This does not mean I think the feature should be absent however.

Neither do I.

> Indeed, I did not know IMAP could do this, just read up on the RFC.
> This MIME-IMB parts fetching is certainly interesting. I do not
> believe KMail supports it right now. But if it did it would certainly
> eliminate this part of the argument.

Loading attachments on demand is almost finished.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

> That's interesting because occasionally I receive HTML-only message from
> Outlook users who are surprised when I tell them about it. They must
> have accidentally changed the config option.

Hotmail changed to sending HTML-only some time ago afaik. Possibly users using 
Hotmail in conjunction with Outlook and/or Outlook Express are affected by 
this as well.

Hiya,  
  
I've been following this thread as it has bloomed, and I was wondering if I could  
make an small observation: there is a small minority who have stated that they  
actively oppose adding HTML/richtext support; there are a few people who complain  
about HTML in emails in general, and don't think it is a terribly important feature, and  
yet who wouldn't vote to remove HTML support if it existed; and a majority of people  
who think that HTML support is a good idea, or at least wouldn't mind if it existed.  On  
top of that, this feature request is currently the highest voted feature in the wishlist  
(80 votes over the next highest, a full 12%), and both Jason and Zack have claimed  
they're looking into it, so it looks like it is going to happen.  
  
Is someone actively campaigning to have this feature request barred?  Or is actively  
trying to halt development of this?  Or are we merely interested about the  
philosophical ramifications of being able to author WYSIWYG rich text emails?  I'm  
just trying to figure out where all of this discussion is going.  
  
Cheers.  

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

> Ave, sorry to respond so late but I was busy with something else. So in
> no particular order:
> 1) Yes, I'm working on it.
> 2) Of course it's doable.
> 3) No, it's not trivial by any means. In fact it's harder when one wants
> to do it correctly.
> 4) Like I said when we had this discussion earlier I want to have a
> pluggable editor interface. Simply because some people wanted to use
> kvim or kate as editors and it's important that we don't have to change
> editors every time someone comes up with something different.
> So to make the long story short I want to have KMail/Editor ServiceType
> and I want to make KMComposeWin completely agnostic of the Editor part.
> It should simply get the text from it. The advantage is that
> implementations don't have to be held within KMail source tree but
> added by third party developers. I got delayed a bit because when I was
> toying with using KWord as an editor in KMail I noticed that filters
> skip tables and started working on that. Thursday I'm going back home
> so I'll have a lot more time to code on that stuff so I should have
> something working very soon.
>
> Zack

Nice. I started hacking at KRichtextEditor tonight to try and finish step 1
of my 4 step plan:

	1. Fix up KRichtextEditor(Part) so it has a clean API and is a nice standalone
	application as well as a nice KPart, add its much needed features like find
	and replace, etc.

	2. FIgure out best way to add support for an alternate part in KMail

	3. Drop it in

	4. Get rich and move to Jamacia.

It seems you (Zack) have been working on step 2. Have you been working on any
editor parts yet? Or just the arch. and interface to switch editors? If so this could be
good, as both need to be done and can be done in parallel.

RE kotext as an editor, this was brought up by geiseri on IRC. I am kind
of reluctant to the idea because not only does it seem a bit heavy, but this would
make RTF editing depend on KOffice. But kotext as an option would be great, alongside
KRichTextEditor and KatePart, KVIM, eventually Kafka, etc. Pluggable editors are good.

One thing I started thinking about RE all this is the spell checking in KMail, I think
the best approach would definitly be to leave the spell checking up to the editing
component... this would let you use the more advanced spell checking of kotext
if you were using that component. Since spell checking with highlighting is suppoed
to be in KTextEdit for 3.2 ( last I heard?? ) then the normal plain old editor in KMail
would also have spell checking without depending on KMail explicitly providing
it.

Any other thoughts? I will keep working on KRichTextEditor.

While I don't know what the technical issues are, the way I see it any work done on the  
KRichTextEditor to make it easier to integrate into kmail for simple formatting is good  
for KDE as a whole, because it seems to me that means KRichTextEditor may be  
more flexible in the long run for other possible things? In fact it may be preferable to  
Kafka to some who just want simple formatting abilities.   
  
As to someone who mentioned they think hotmail is "HTML only now": someone has to  
enter another wish... to be able to render HTML-only mail as plain text in kmail for  
viewing. (-; The Bat actually has this... when i used it any mail i got i would see as plain  
text first whether there is a plain text part or not.  
  
This last paragraph is a little off topic... but at least it's not a off topic *flame* like have  
been flying around here lately. (-:  
  

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On Tuesday 24 June 2003 02:11, Sean E.Russell wrote:
> Is someone actively campaigning to have this feature request barred? 
> Or is actively trying to halt development of this?

No and no. Support for composing HTML messages will come.

> Or are we merely interested about the philosophical ramifications of
> being able to author WYSIWYG rich text emails?

Yes, it seems so. Although the bug report system is probably not the 
best place for this.

Can I butt in here ... 
 
I believe that most people don't really care whether HTML mail 
is there or not, but what they do care about is ... 
 
a) being able to read email that is sent to them 
b) being able to reply to the email 
c) being able to edit the reply  
d) being able to cut and past content from other internet applications 
 
As somebody noted, Kmail can already display HTML. 
 
But replying and forwarding (in my experence) often corrupts  
the message (somebody else also made this observation) 
 
Cutting and pasting simply don't work ... 99% of the time that 
I'm tring to send HTML email (and I send a lot) is when I cut and 
past from a web page, or from a document. 
 
At work I use Windows -- and outlook, with the default editor set 
to HTML.  That way I can forward web pages as links, or the  
web page itself (from Explorer), cut and past from word or  
a spread sheet, cut and paste from I.E.  Things always work. 
 
At home I use Gentoo/KDE 3.1/Kmail.  But if I want to capture  
the content of a web page (and not just the link), I have to move 
over to my wife's machine.  Add that (I say) is why Kmail needs  
HTML mail !  
 
(PS -- cut and paste from Konqueror needs to perserve any 
links in the selected text -- otherwise the feature is almost  
useless.   Manually copying the links into the email is not 
effecient and thus not acceptable) 
 
With all respect, Randy 

I really hope KMail will never support the creation of HTML-mails. 
I've never seen any reason at all that would make HTML-mails useful for any 
purpose. The main reason I use Kmail is the fact, that it doesn't support HTML (even 
the display of received HTML-mails is off). 
Want to send someone a webpage? If you can send someone mail, you can send 
him a link to that, no need to put the page into the mail and the addresee can 
deceide for himself if he wants to visist that page. 
Want to underline something? Use _underlined_. 
Want to make something big? Use *big*. 
In fact, the lack of HTML-support in KMail is one of the main-reasons I use KMail. 
Even Mozilla uses HTML by default (IIRC) and if someone really needs 
HTML-editing, use Mozilla. 
Please, don't add such a useless feature. :) 

I agree with the last comment. Just look how Mozilla supporting HTML email has 
destroyed half of the world. By God, it actually lets you reply to one of those evil, evil, 
evil people (such as my sister) who writes HTML email, in kind. Please save me from 
this.  And while you, good defenders of True (anti-HTML) Email, O Developers of KMail, 
are at it, please consider removing the tree view of folders. It is just distracting and 
there's no reason anyone should need to ever nest folders beyond one level, so a 
simple list should suffice. Actually, now that I'm writing this, I think it is fairly obvious... 
the whole GUI thing is utterly superfluous, and while an interested experiment is pretty 
clearly a big mistake. Please *remove* the GUI from KMail, as soon as possible. There 
is no need for a button bar, for example: it just makes people lazy and stupid... they 
should all have memorized the keyboard shortcuts by now, if they cared about email at 
all. It must be obvious to all by now, that moving KMail into the GUI paradigm has 
probably just encouraged the sadly mistaken people who now whine after HTML email. 
 
Last but not least, I really must protest this so-called "fancy" header view. It bloody 
looks like HTML to me! The next thing you know people will be asking for some way to 
customize it themselves. Just list the full plain text rfc822 headers, please! I know there 
is an option for this, but it is not the default, and you are ruining people's minds who 
don't know better than to switch it to what it should be. And besides that, some idiot 
developer there that somehow must have snuck in under the radar (who is no doubt 
now long gone, and snicking madly to himself that no one has noticed this yet) actually 
allows users to select a proportional font to view emails! What the hell? Everyone 
knows that all real email is fixed-width, less than 80 columns... any email that isn't 
should be rejected immediately by KMail! Allowing email that does not conform to True 
Email standards such as these is just playing right into Bill Gates' internet-baby-killing 
hands. It makes my beautiful ascii-art text-space laid out SIG look like crap as well. 
Bastards. 
 
Thank you. I know you understand all of the above, and just needed a reminder and 
encouragement to "fix" these things up, and will be acting immediately to rectify these 
issues. I must be off to harrass the infected koffice developers... this is probably all their 
fault for including the capability of adding italic and bold text to letters and documents in 
KWord... i fear that some people have the insane notion that email is in some way 
similar to writing a letter. From there I'll be picking some bones with those kopete 
developers who have the audacity to replace text emoticons with little graphic coloured 
representations! What's up with that?! Did I type that? Do I look like that? 
(Furthermore, Kopete should stop wasting time with support for those stupid hacks 
known as ICQ, Messenger, etc...---which my own wife, alas, sometimes uses, claiming 
that her so-called 'friends' all use them---and just concentrate on a better IRC 
implementation, the only real chat system.)  
 
What short sighted idiots this moronic world is filled with, eh? Let us return to sanity. 
Thank you again. 
 

Hm, this is the 52th comment added to this report, and somehow the comments 
just get more and more voluminous, more personal, more off topic and 
respectively less productive. I wonder how comes... 

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail         

Yeah it's a war! May the WYSIWYG prevail.


At 17:58 29-6-2003 +0000, you wrote:
>------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
>You are a voter for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
>
>http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4202
>
>
>
>
>------- Additional Comments From datschge@gmx.de  2003-06-29 19:58 -------
>Hm, this is the 52th comment added to this report, and somehow the comments
>just get more and more voluminous, more personal, more off topic and
>respectively less productive. I wonder how comes...

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On Sunday 29 June 2003 05:07, Randy Roesler wrote:
> But replying and forwarding (in my experence) often corrupts
> the message (somebody else also made this observation)

If you want to reply to a HTML message and don't want those ugly HTML 
tags in the reply then enable HTML rendering for the message you want 
to reply to. If this doesn't work for you then you should update.

If you want to forward a HTML message then forward it as attachment if 
you want to prevent any changes.

If you want to send someone a web page use Location->Send File in 
Konqueror.

Screw all who donot like HTML Mail! I use it all the time. U cant use plain text 
to display and image on web tv.

And you, sir, cannot spell. :) Can this very silly thread die now, please? 

yet another very good reason for html-authored email: long links.  sure, putting 
www.mysite.com/dir/index.html is ok, but how bout: 
http://www.mysite.org/dir1/dir2/dir3/somescript.php?name1=value1&name2=value2&name3=value3 
? 
 
"learn to copy and paste" you might say...  that's what i said until just now, when my 
boss was stricken with a case of "i'm an idiot, i don't know how to copy and paste and 
i use windows"...  a terrible disease, but one that makes html a nessecity. 
 

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

> ------- yet another very good reason for html-authored email: long links. 
> sure, putting www.mysite.com/dir/index.html is ok, but how bout:
> http://www.mysite.org/dir1/dir2/dir3/somescript.php?name1=value1&name2=valu
> e2&name3=value3 ?

http://tinyurl.com/

yes, let's make sending links to others dependent on the stability of an independent 
web site.  better yet, let's make sending links to other dependent on said site's ease of 
integration with konqueror. 
 
c'mon, if you don't like it, don't use it.  if you don't want to recieve it, complain to those 
sending it.  i wouldn't use html mail on a regular basis, only when it's required, or when 
i know the receiving party's email client supports it. 

I remember while on Windows, why I bought the Bat!, because of the lack of html
mail and the +++ for security. Now on Linux, that security part is already
covered by the OS itself, but I can't accept html/rt in Kmail. A plugin should
be OK, but the default Kmail, NO WAY!]


HTML is for webpages, not for e-mail.

This comment is pretty misguided, seeing how KMail already has viewing HTML mail. 
 
Just TURN IT OFF, the ability to compose it will not affect you if you don't use it! 
 
Whatever happened to the Kroupware / Kontact project, and the goal of having a true 
open replacement for Exchange / Outlook? No Fortune 500 company is going to 
accept Kontact as a viable replacement for Outlook if they can't even bold their 
company name in their corperate email signature. 

Yup, my employer requires the use of rich text and a special font as part of the corporate identity 
guidelines. 

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

Please stop abusing the KDE Bug Tracking System as discussion board. If 
you want to discuss the pros and cons of HTML messages then please do 
it somewhere else. KMail will get HTML composing capabilities so any 
further discussion is unnecessary. Thanks for your understanding.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

Well guys 979 votes already, most wanted KDE feature by votes, I 
expect the 1000 mark will be reached shortly.

I'm impressed, and to celebrate I've written an initial PATCH to 
update the KMail composer with HTML editing facilities. (Apart from 
colors and tables, It's verbose but simple). So keep on voting and 
I'll polish the patch by adding support for generating HTML messages, 
and definitely a configuration option will be needed, (at least I 
think this should be disabled by default). 

Anyway just to let you guys know that I'm making progress working on 
this feature.

Don.

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

On Monday 21 July 2003 02:58, you wrote:
> Well guys 979 votes already, most wanted KDE feature by votes, I
> expect the 1000 mark will be reached shortly.
>
> I'm impressed, and to celebrate I've written an initial PATCH to
> update the KMail composer with HTML editing facilities. (Apart from

Thanks, Don!

For the config option, I would suggest these three options: 
 
( ) Disable HTML Email composition by default 
(x) Enable HTML Email composition when replying to HTML emails 
( ) Enable HTML Email composition by default 
 
... with X as the default, and a quick toggle hotkey while composing. Disabling the 
HTML composing all the time by default would probably block many users from even 
knowing it ever existed... 
 

Subject: Re:  support for writing HTML mail

Dnia pon 21. lipca 2003 08:58, napisa

Well I think I made it 1000 votes. With HTML editing support in kmail, I can look forward to 
dumping evolution at last... 

Subject: Html Mail

This is really for lypanov but I cc the list and bug 4202 subscribers 
just in case they are interested.

Here is what I have for html mail composing so far. It's a patch that 
updates the composer with html support. It adds a new toolbar to the 
composer along with actions to change the font face, font size, 
alignment, and emphasis style of the text, and support for creating a 
variety of lists. Sorry no support for colors at the moment, that 
clashes with color quoting and spell checking.

TODO:
Need to consider if there are standard KDE icons for the toolbar icons 
or whether there should be.

HTML mail might break spell checking, along with other things that 
call setText, need todo work to prevent setText from losing style 
information, or avoid calls to setText.

Need support for editing html mail in drafts folder.

Replying to html mail should be improved.

Support for inline images requires more work, including improvements 
to/on-top-of QTextEdit, and probably support for multipart/related 
(I'm also working on that but I think support for inline images is 
optional).

Creating the multipart alternative/related message that is actually 
going to be sent.

Adding an option to the composer.

Adding an option to the configuration dialog.

Please ignore the xxx's in the source code, I just use them as 
bookmarks.

Don.


Created an attachment (id=2186)
htmlmail.tgz

Created attachment 2414 [details]
patch

Hi,
This is an extended patch from Don. It's not perfect, but you can pretty well
send text with markup.
Messages are sent in multipart/alternative.
New composer windows have a menuoption (Options->Editor) to select plaintext or
html.
If you mark up text as you type, the markup will be removed again. I think this
has to do with the KEdit class and the automatic spellchecking. I don't know
how to disable it.

To test:
Since I don't use any encryption in my mail, this part hasn't been tested.

TODO:
html messages in the drafts folder cannot be edited as it should be.
Adding an option to the configuration dialog
Spellchecking doesn't work correctly.
... ?

Edwin

Finally! Looks like I'll soon be able to return to using KMail instead of Mozzy!
This was the one major feature it was missing. In almost every other aspect
KMail is king of the mail clients.

I also rather like the idea, expressed earlier on, of allowing users to display
ALL email as text... including messages sent as HTML-only. I did something like
that on a mailing list I operate: Any emails marked as text/html were piped
through lynx to generate a text rendition which replaced the original mail. It
wasn't perfect but workable. With a feature like that as well as HTML mail
composing, KMail could be the ideal client both for persons who abhor HTML
emails and those who can't live without it.

Created attachment 2654 [details]
version 3

Hi all you people that like HTML editing.
This is my latest patch. Could you test it ?

The thing I didn't test is sending plaintext and html encrypted/signed mails.
Could someone test this and send me results ?
Further, when spellchecking is done on the message and some text is
highlighted, it doesn't unhighlight if you turn to html. That's the only
present 'bug' I know of right now.

the patch is made against cvs head and is gzipped.
Thanks,
Edwin.

Created attachment 2719 [details]
version 4

Highlighted text from spellchecking now becomes unhighlighted
+some few minor fixes

*** Bug 52312 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 54122 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Well, it seems a solution was found here. But why isn't this bug set to "resolved" then? Is something wrong?
Anyway, i wanted to propose to make quanta's VPL view a KPart. Does it interest you, or is the current solution already nice enough?

The patch is about to be committed to cvs.

Regards.

I downloaded the patch, but I don't have idea how to apply to my kmail. Can somewhere say me where can I find a howto about? Thanks

Extending the previous question:
How do I apply this patch? Will I necessarily have to use the cvs version of kdepim? Or can the 3.2.0 release source be patched, and recompiled? Thanks

Created attachment 4659 [details]
patch

Hi,
If you like, you may try this patch. It's actually for cvs, but I think it
applies also to 3.2 . I think there will be collisions while patching, but
nonetheless you can compile.
Use 'patch' to patch.

Regards,
Edwin

added to cvs. It will be part of kdepim-3.3
In the "Options" menu of the composerwindow there's an item "Formatting (HTML)". With this option, you can format your text.

Regards,
Edwin

Thank you very much!! It's great!!! Very good job! 

However, I think that forwarding a mail that is already in html, should open a composer window with html editing, and not use the text version.

Thanks for adding HTML mail support :)

Would it be possible to add an Icon for the Formatting option and add it to the composer window toolbar by default?

I think it is an important enough ( and often used enough ) feature to merit a toolbar button.

In most mailers the option to format your mail as HTMl is a global setting (and there is also a per mail format setting as text or HTML), affecting all the mails sent by the mailer (Thunderbird/Evolution). Although I think it's great, and the feature I was waiting for moving to Kmail) that we have HTML support, it is teadious to be checking that option all the time. I am using kmail at my coporate intranet and I do need to format my mail quite a lot. Can it be added as a general option as well?

HTML Support so far is quite limited, what is missing is
-tables, see bug 46411
-images, see bug 89293
-copy and paste, see bug 89057 (and bug 58517)

Hoping someone will hear me (don't want to open another BR)..am I unable to find it or there isn't the possibility to set a background color for HTML mails? 

The option to change the background of your email has been withheld in the interest of good taste.  It can only be enabled by trained graphic design professionals ;-)

Seriously though, KMail should probably allow you to do it.  But there are very few good reasons to change the background color of your mail.  I hope you'll reconsider.

I fear the next feature request will be repeating background images and Comic Sans default font, or (God forbid) embedding MIDI background music :-O

IMHO the user should be FREE to decide what his/her email looks and 
sounds like :-) If it is really distasteful, he/she will get 
appropriate feedback from the recipient of the email anyway.


On Jan 15, 2005, at 11:43, James wrote:

> ------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
> You are on the CC list for the bug, or are watching someone who is.
>
> http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4202
>
>
>
>
> ------- Additional Comments From Spy_Hunter myrealbox com  2005-01-15 
> 10:43 -------
> The option to change the background of your email has been withheld in 
> the interest of good taste.  It can only be enabled by trained graphic 
> design professionals ;-)
>
> Seriously though, KMail should probably allow you to do it.  But there 
> are very few good reasons to change the background color of your mail. 
>  I hope you'll reconsider.
>
> I fear the next feature request will be repeating background images 
> and Comic Sans default font, or (God forbid) embedding MIDI background 
> music :-O
>

> I fear the next feature request will be repeating background images and
> Comic Sans default font, or (God forbid) embedding MIDI background
> music :-O  

Or <blink> and <marquee> elements support!

Matej