I didn’t get any response when I asked this a while ago so I’ll
try again in case I didn’t explain the problem well.
When someone sends email from outlook that includes html to my RT3
installation, it adds its own chunk of content including the
ticket URL to the text portion and sends it off to the admincc watchers
keeping the html as a separate attachment. When I view this in
evolution, I see it the way I like: the text part is shown first
and the ticket link is clickable. Then the html portion is shown
inline below. When I view it in Outlook, it only shows the
html portion which is unmodified and doesn’t include the ticket
link, and the text portion is an attachment. Opening the text
attachment starts notepad as the viewer so even though you can
see the url you can’t click it.
So: is there a way to make RT3 either add the link to the html
portion as well as the text, or delete the html portion in the
forwarded email so Outlook will show the text part and allow
clicking the ticket url to go directly to it?
Les Mikesell
les@futuresource.com
When someone sends email from outlook that includes html to my RT3
installation, it adds its own chunk of content including the
ticket URL to the text portion and sends it off to the admincc watchers
keeping the html as a separate attachment. When I view this in
evolution, I see it the way I like: the text part is shown first
and the ticket link is clickable. Then the html portion is shown
inline below.
This is also the way I see it in Mail.app in OS X.
When I view it in Outlook, it only shows the
html portion which is unmodified and doesn’t include the ticket
link, and the text portion is an attachment. Opening the text
attachment starts notepad as the viewer so even though you can
see the url you can’t click it.
So: is there a way to make RT3 either add the link to the html
portion as well as the text, or delete the html portion in the
forwarded email so Outlook will show the text part and allow
clicking the ticket url to go directly to it?
Maybe it’s just me, but changing the behavior of the server because
of a poorly written client just seems backward. I suggest that,
since the unwanted behavior stems from a particular client, you either
stop using that client (I’d suggest that anyway), or figure out how to
reconfigure that client to behave the way you prefer.
If the client isn’t configurable enough to allow you to change its
behavior to something you like, I again suggest it isn’t a client you
should be using (why use an email client you don’t like when there are
so many to choose from nowadays?).
-Guy
So: is there a way to make RT3 either add the link to the html
portion as well as the text, or delete the html portion in the
forwarded email so Outlook will show the text part and allow
clicking the ticket url to go directly to it?
Maybe it’s just me, but changing the behavior of the server because
of a poorly written client just seems backward.
Well, the reason you do things on a server at all is generally
so you don’t have to do it separately for all the clients so
it seems right to me…
I suggest that,
since the unwanted behavior stems from a particular client, you either
stop using that client (I’d suggest that anyway), or figure out how to
reconfigure that client to behave the way you prefer.
If someone could point to an email RFC that says outlook is doing
the wrong thing I might be able to make an argument here. I’m
not convinced myself that if someone sends a nicely formatted
html part that the mailer should prefer to show plain text, or
even that it makes any sense for a url in plain text to be
clickable. It just happens to be useful in this particular case.
If the client isn’t configurable enough to allow you to change its
behavior to something you like, I again suggest it isn’t a client you
should be using (why use an email client you don’t like when there are
so many to choose from nowadays?).
I use evolution, but other people are involved here and they should
also be allowed to use the client they prefer. It just seems like
the ‘right’ place to add a link that you expect to be clicked would
be in the html portion of the message if there is one.
Les Mikesell
les@futuresource.com
I noticed a similar Outlook XP / RT bug today.
Unfortunately the user-base I support primarily uses Outlook XP.
If a client sends an email from Outlook XP that includes 3 MIME types: 1)
Plain Text 2) HTML formatted Text 3) and an attachment…
To the AdminCc’s/Cc’s RT says "This transaction appears to have no content"
and the message appears to the Outlook end-users, with RT’s "no content"
message and 3 attachments (1 text, 1 HTML message, and 1 attachment).
Unfortunately there appear to be a number of ways for our
"creatively-inclined" outlook email users to put a message in those formats
(e.g. using “stationary”, different format for signature files, forwarding
someone else’s message, etc…).
I saw this similar type of bug pop-up a few years ago, unrelated to RT, with
Eudora users (with 3 MIME types) emailing Netscape users. The message
appeared blank…
So of course I asked our end users to email RT in plain-text and mentioned
that their pretty email might not look so good to other people as well…
Just the same I’d rather try to implement a fix in RT rather than preaching
about why highly formatted email is stupid.
My Build:
RT 3.2.1
FreeBSD 4.8
Perl 5.8.4
Apache 1.3.31
mod_perl 1.29
Thanks,
Mike