[rt-users] HTML E-Mails (was: No Answers)

[Torben Nehmer]

Hello everybody,

thanks for the answers so far, I'm starting to get a grasp at the problems now.

-- On 2007-02-14 James Moseley wrote:
> Torben, without doing the research, I am not even sure if the RT code knows
> how to parse html email.  I think you'd be better off just sending plain
> text email through the mailgate.  I am sure this topic has been covered
> before somewhere in the list archives.

I have been searching for the specific problem I have here with MS Outlook driven HTML / Rich Text mails, unfortunalety the only references I found were years old and basically outlining the same problem but no solution which I could use.

I have been thinking patching into RTs HTML Mail handling to optionally plug in HTMLTidy before actually showing the mails, but so fare I would need some pointers where to start looking (RTs codebase isn't exactly trivial to understand, which is no complaint, just a statement of fact):

1. Where does RT read and process incoming Mails where one could sanely "plug in" to post-process HTML or mime/multipart-alternative mails.

2. I'm not sure if this might not also be a problem related only to mail display and replies, as my first explorations into the Database didn't show any error, so I'd also be interested where RT reads mails for display and replies at a later time after loading them from the DB.

I fully understand that the majority (read: Englisch speaking) users of RT don't experience this problem. Nevertheless I think that it needs attention in some way or the other; especially if one wants to broaden RTs userbase in the world. 

It is my experience that user friendlyness, especially to end-users with no technical experience is a very important point. In this respect, telling over a thousand users to "just" send plain text E-Mails is guranteed to fail. So far I didn't have any users wondering about all the ?s in the text, but it'll come ;-).


Note, that I'd also be happy with some pointers to resources (documentation, mailing list threads etc.) which I might have missed; by no means I'm expecting a full "manual" how to hack RT. Also I'd of course be willing to publish my patches to make RT work better with a German speaking Outlook.


Yours sincerely,
Torben Nehmer

-------
Torben Nehmer
Diplom Informatiker (FH)
Business System Developer

CANCOM Deutschland GmbH
Messerschmittstr. 20
89343 Scheppach
Germany

Phone: +49 (0)8225 - 996-1118
Fax: +49 (0)8225 - 996-41118
torben.nehmer at cancom.de

CANCOM Deutschland GmbH
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Jettingen-Scheppach
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Geschäftsführer: Paul Holdschik, Christian Linder