[pmmail-list] hyper-text?

[Tim Roberts]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2002 19:05:08 +0100, Brian Morrison wrote:
>
>Please tell us the RFC number of the email standard that defines the
>behaviour of html encoded mail.

RFCs don't necessarily define behavior.

RFC 1521 covers MIME, and defines how the MIME headers and sections are to be 
formatted and interpreted.

RFC 1866 defines HTML, and covers how a MIME section of type text/html is to 
be interpreted.

RFC 2111 defines the method of embedding images into a message that can be 
referred to by URL in another section.

RFC 1738 defines URLs, and reserves the cid: URL for referring to MIME body 
parts.

So, the RFCs tell us how to find an HTML section in a MIME message, how to 
interpret HTML tags, and how to embed images in other sections to avoid 
having to make another network request round trip.

None of these say "this sequence of tags should be rendered in exactly this 
way", but it isn't supposed to.  That level of detail isn't even given for 
HTML via WWW.  The renderer (browser or mail reader) is supposed to decide 
how to render the tags.  PMMail for Windows chooses one method of rendering 
HTML.  Its method is valid, but it happens to produce rather poor results.

The PMMail propensity for scanning for <.H.T.M.L.> tags within a text/plain 
section is an undesireable extension.

--
- Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

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