[MlMt] To *not* generate HTML

[Pete Resnick]

On 1 Jul 2024, at 4:57, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> On 29 Jun 2024, at 4:31, Pete Resnick via mailmate wrote:
>
>> Using 1.14 (6038). In "Composer" settings, I have "Generate HTML even 
>> if only for styling" turned *off*. However, as far as I can tell, 
>> HTML is *always* generated, even if the only thing in the message is 
>> italic (like this message). Am I missing some other setting? Has this 
>> not worked for a long time?
>
> Yes, this has not been an option for a long time. The original idea 
> was that receiving email clients could, when possible, just convert 
> Markdown to HTML when needed for display, but this has all kinds of 
> unresolved issues and would only work well when both sending and 
> receiving email client was MailMate itself.

I'm not sure I understand that. Sure, there is a variety of markdown 
that some implementations might not understand, but then it just 
displays a plaintext. The simple stuff like bold, italic, etc., everyone 
can do pretty easily.

>> My desire was for this message to send with a top-level type of 
>> "Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; markup=markdown". I seem to 
>> be getting a multipart/alternative with a first part of markdown and 
>> a second part of HTML.
>
> For now, you only have the option of disabling the use of Markdown. 
> This should prevent the generation of HTML if it's not needed for 
> other reasons (like embedding replied HTML).

Bummer.

> You are welcome to describe your use case(s).

I subscribe to a bunch of mailing lists (primarily IETF) with a bunch of 
old curmudgeonly people who use old curmudgeonly clients and I would 
like them not to get all of the extra crud, but still allow people who 
can change \*italic\* to *italic* to do so. Also, these lists tend to do 
inline replies (like this one), and if there was HTML in the sent 
message, other clients always send the reply is in HTML, meaning I have 
to go through and hand edit stuff to do inline replies because some 
other clients generate utterly stupid HTML.

(And of course there is the obsessive part of me says that you should 
generate the absolute minimum that you can, and sending HTML when all 
I've got is one italicized word is not minimum. But I assume that's why 
you put the option in there in the first place. I notice that you don't 
put in "format=flowed" if there are no wrapped lines, nor put in a 
"charset" when there are no non-US-ASCII characters. I just want the 
same thing for HTML; if you don't need it, don't include it.)

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/
All connections to the world are tenuous at best
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