[Users] HTML Rendering

[Earl Hood]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2021 11:29:02 -0400, chainsawuser at cfl.rr.com wrote:
> My only point and request is that in a world were HTML is the
> dominate standard for browsers and email clients (internet in
> general),

<rant> For email, it is an abomination and security nightmare wrt MUAs.
There was the text/enriched format (before the Web), and even the
experimental text/setext type, to provide formatting beyond text/plain
(with setext supporting linking).  It was companies like Microsoft that
jumped into using HTML in email with most users not aware of the
technical swamp it has caused (and the transmission bloat). </rant>

I just recently started using Claws Mail for work since later
Thunderbird releases no longer supports the external editor plugin (why
external editor support is not a standard feature in all MUAs is beyond
me).  Most of the people at my work use Outlook, so HTML emails are
common.  As of now, the text-based rendering done in Claws has been
mostly sufficient (no worse than what Thunderbird does), and for the
rare case where it is not, I can launch the text/html part into Firefox
(with NoScript enabled) [I also have the Fancy plugin, but I am still
using 3.18).


> I don't understand why there is not an up-to-date
> fully-featured HTML plugin to render emails perfectly.

As stated by someone else, it is not an easy task and trying to do so
opens up security risks.  Claws Mail makes it easy to launch HTML parts
in an external browser (but I recommend an external browser with
JavaScrpt disabled since I do not think Claws tries to sanitize the HTML
before passing to browser).

One limitation of the external browser viewing is MHTML cid: URL
references are not supported.  The Fancy plugin does support it, but
based on the recent release announcement, the Fancy plugin was dropped
for the 4.0 Windows port due to upstream provider no longer supporting
Windows.

I find the lack of cid: support in external viewer not a real problem.
I can still view the referenced images directly in Claws by selecting
the image parts in the message view.


> Flawless HTML rendering for viewing incoming emails is literally the 
> only feature missing that I can think of, out of the hundred(s) of 
> features/settings I tried in Claws Mail.

IMO, IMAP IDLE support would be way more useful, but doubt it will ever
be (I read the past threads regarding the topic).  I can manage without
it for now, but I am debating if I want to learn Claws plugin framework
to see if it can be provided via a plugin.


> I hope someone in the Claws Mail developers team network is working
> on this.

It seems if a replacement for Fancy for Windows can be found/developed,
then you should get what you want.  You may want to check why the
WebKitGTK project dropped Windows support and see if that decision can
be reconsidered.

--ewh