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The article seems to think that everyone should switch away from HTML. But how well does console clients deal with HTML emails. It's not like you can tell every

The article seems to think that everyone should switch away from HTML. But how well does console clients deal with HTML emails. It's not like you can tell everyone to stop sending you HTML.

seuss1969 9y ago
Mutt deals surprisingly well with HTML emails. Most newsletters and other HTML mails usually come with a plain text version as well which Mutt will preferably display. Apart from that, you can make mutt pipe the HTML Email to a console browser for rendering. It works transparently. I've been doing this for a while now
u801e 9y ago
I suppose that mutt could be configured to either display the plain text MIME part of such an email, or pipe the HTML through something like links -dump.
- Freaky 9y ago
  ~/.mailcap: text/html; lynx -force_html -dump %s; copiousoutput ~/.muttrc: alternative_order text/plain
vincentkriek 9y ago
What made me switched back to Mutt was the ability to call subapplications to show you emails. As I always have a browser running, I can tell mutt to show it in firefox, which allows me to watch the HTML mail in all of it's glory (instead of a lynx like dump in the console which I do not like).
- matthiasl 9y ago
  I do exactly this too for the occasional mail that I really can't read as plain text. One concern is that I'm letting through all web bugs and, perhaps, outright malicious HTML. If anyone has a solution for that, something like filtering the HTML, I'd love to hear it.
coldtea 9y ago
>It's not like you can tell everyone to stop sending you HTML. No, but HTML emails, 99% of them, are just plain text in an HTML markup. You won't miss garish colors or font choices. As for embedded images etc, you can still view them with plain text mail clients (as attachments).
simias 9y ago
I use mutt as my sole email client and I don't find HTML to be that much of an issue. The vast majority of the emails I actually want to receive are either text or multipart/alternative with a text option. Now of course, depending on the type of email you receive your mileage may vary. If I really end up having to read an HTML email those can be displayed "inline" using a text browser such as w3m. If the HTML is mostly text it works pretty well, for instance: https://svkt.org/~simias/mutt-html.png https://svkt.org/~simias/mutt-html.png If however it's image or css-heavy and doesn't work well in text-only form there's still the option to tell mutt to open the email in your web browser. Of course in this case there are security implications so it's probably best not to do it from untrusted sources.
stevekemp 9y ago
The general approach is to display the text/plain version of any incoming mails, but if you absolutely need to view the HTML then you'll pipe out to lynx, w3m, or links to view it.
hiq 9y ago
The common solution is to pipe these HTML messages through a command line browser, see https://debian-administration.org/article/75/Reading_HTML_email_with_Mutt https://debian-administration.org/article/75/Reading_HTML_em... for instance. You still have to open the pictures manually if you want to see them.

The article seems to think that everyone should switch away from HTML. But how well does console clients deal with HTML emails. It's not like you can tell everyone to stop sending you HTML.

seuss1969 9y ago

Mutt deals surprisingly well with HTML emails. Most newsletters and other HTML mails usually come with a plain text version as well which Mutt will preferably display. Apart from that, you can make mutt pipe the HTML Email to a console browser for rendering. It works transparently. I've been doing this for a while now

u801e 9y ago

I suppose that mutt could be configured to either display the plain text MIME part of such an email, or pipe the HTML through something like links -dump.

Freaky 9y ago
~/.mailcap: text/html; lynx -force_html -dump %s; copiousoutput ~/.muttrc: alternative_order text/plain

vincentkriek 9y ago

What made me switched back to Mutt was the ability to call subapplications to show you emails. As I always have a browser running, I can tell mutt to show it in firefox, which allows me to watch the HTML mail in all of it's glory (instead of a lynx like dump in the console which I do not like).

matthiasl 9y ago
I do exactly this too for the occasional mail that I really can't read as plain text. One concern is that I'm letting through all web bugs and, perhaps, outright malicious HTML. If anyone has a solution for that, something like filtering the HTML, I'd love to hear it.

coldtea 9y ago

>It's not like you can tell everyone to stop sending you HTML. No, but HTML emails, 99% of them, are just plain text in an HTML markup. You won't miss garish colors or font choices. As for embedded images etc, you can still view them with plain text mail clients (as attachments).

simias 9y ago

I use mutt as my sole email client and I don't find HTML to be that much of an issue. The vast majority of the emails I actually want to receive are either text or multipart/alternative with a text option. Now of course, depending on the type of email you receive your mileage may vary. If I really end up having to read an HTML email those can be displayed "inline" using a text browser such as w3m. If the HTML is mostly text it works pretty well, for instance: https://svkt.org/~simias/mutt-html.png https://svkt.org/~simias/mutt-html.png If however it's image or css-heavy and doesn't work well in text-only form there's still the option to tell mutt to open the email in your web browser. Of course in this case there are security implications so it's probably best not to do it from untrusted sources.

stevekemp 9y ago

The general approach is to display the text/plain version of any incoming mails, but if you absolutely need to view the HTML then you'll pipe out to lynx, w3m, or links to view it.

hiq 9y ago

The common solution is to pipe these HTML messages through a command line browser, see https://debian-administration.org/article/75/Reading_HTML_email_with_Mutt https://debian-administration.org/article/75/Reading_HTML_em... for instance. You still have to open the pictures manually if you want to see them.