[Alpine-info] Forwarded mail partially invisible in Outlook

[Eduardo Chappa]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2024, Olaf Skibbe wrote:


> I came across a strange issue which is most likely related to outlook. 

> But since alpine is involved, I want to make sure that the problem is 

> not caused by alpine.


Dear Olaf,

   sorry I had not replied earlier, I've been very busy on this side of the 
screen. The problem is not Alpine, the problem is the outlook interface. 
The way that the interface works is not the way that you would assume that 
it should work. The first clue to this, is that the client (the interface 
you see in the web) is not an IMAP or POP client. This interface exports 
messages in a different way, and unless you are a programmer you would not 
know how it works, so I will tell you a bit how that interface works and 
how this is a problem in the way Alpine works.

   When a message is exported through the web, the default is to export 
certain parts but not all. In theory the full message could be exported, 
but the default is to export a part of it. What I mean is that when you 
open the message to read it the client has a choice, they can either pick 
the html part (default) or the text/plain part. The latter has to be 
requested explicitly. You could get both, but that would be slow, or you 
could request the full message (even slower), so guess what the Outlook 
interface is doing: Picking up the default, that is the HTML part.

   On the other hand, Alpine IS NOT an HTML client. That means Alpine does 
not edit the HTML part, so when Alpine sends something, it goes in the 
text/plain part.

   Now when alpine finds a html message with an inline part, in order to 
not to destroy the html part it attaches it, and the text/plain part which 
the user composes and the html part in the original message go back 
separate in the same message. The Outlook client prefers the html part, 
and there you have your problem where Outlook displays the html part which 
was not touched by Alpine.

   This does not happen with all text email clients. Mutt destroys the html 
part and messages composed in Mutt will not have this issue, so recipients 
in outlook will see messages replied to in Mutt as you typed them. Is this 
the correct behavior? Would it be better to add html editing capabilities 
to Alpine?

   I hope this helps you understand the issue.

-- 
Eduardo