Add an option to wrap a patch in <pre> in git-imap-send which ironically results in a cleaner patch from Thunderbird.

Due to Major Domo limitations, the following patch cannot be send normally to the list.

It is available here:

http://www.codeweavers.com/~jwhite/0001-Add-an-option-to-wrap-a-patch-in-pre-in-git-imap-s-v2.patch

This version reflects suggested improvements to the text by Jay Soffian.

Cheers,

Jeremy

I do not think of a reason, other than to trigger the workaround you mentioned in the documentation part of the patch, why any sane user would want to send a patch as HTML. This configuration variable sounds more like "imap.forceThunderbirdToSendNonFlowedTextByExploitingItsBug" than "imap.html", in other words.

What worries me the most is if there is any guarantee that this bug you are exploiting to force it to send a patch in the common denominator format _will not be fixed_ in future versions of Thunderbird.

I see your patch deals only with ampersand, less-than, greater-than and dquot. Do you know if this is enough, or would letters outside US-ASCII need to be expressed in ampersand-hash "character reference" notation?

Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 13.02.2009 05:19:

It's not a bug, it's a feature ;)

In fact it really is: preformatted text in HTML (<pre>) is by definition left alone. Now, when you are about to send an HTML mail TB asks you what to do (or takes a choice from preferences/addressbook): send as HTML, as text or both.

The fact that the current HTML->text converter respects preformated text without reflowing (and without f-f, which would allow reflowing on the receiving side) is a feature. TB trys to represent the HTML in text form as closely as possible.

According to Ben of Mozilla fame this is enough for special characters. I don't know about UTF-8, though. Usually, TB recognizes the proper encoding.

Michael J Gruber

With Michael's proviso well in hand (it's a feature, not a bug), I did want to say that I otherwise think this is a reasonable analysis.

In fact, calling the option imap.thunderbird-fixed-html is arguably a better name.

Finally, I know it's my patch, but for the record, I won't be hurt if it's round filed. You can make a clean case that not taking it in leaves pressure on the joint dev communities to find a better solution.

But the only better approach I can imagine is if Thunderbird were to respect a 'format=fixed' injected in a message body. However, as I think about that, I believe a correct Thunderbird implementation of that would require having a per message setting for format. The Thunderbird team is very reluctant to expose any UI on f=f (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86607),
so having a per message UI element certainly sounds like a dead idea walking :-/.

Cheers,

Jeremy

The patch is not sent as HTML. It is merely passed to the mailer as HTML.
The "reason" is that HTML allows more information: It allows to separate human language text from preformatted text / source code.

Human language text follows other rules in some (I'll call them "more capable", to be just as advocating) mailers than others: text flow / wrapping, link and quote recognition etc.pp. all make sense for human language text / normal emails, but not for source code. Plain text is inherently limited in which information it can convey (no links, no quotes, no flow etc.pp.).

For more information, see the long email thread that preceeded. I don't feel like repeating it.

I agree that "html" is not a good wording, given the immediate disgust that it invokes with many people in the community. (Which is partially warranted, and partially irrational.)

I'd propose a less inflammatory wording (and posts):
imap.preformatted
imap.thunderbird
(The first is better, because other mailers might have the same problem, now or in the future, and might benefit from the same workaround).

FWIW, it's not a bug that he's exploiting. mailto:[email protected]?subject=""&html-body="" is a feature (not sure if documented).

What you see is not a bug in Thunderbird.

Yes, this is enough to escape literals in HTML code.

If so, this this was a bug before and after the patch. What matters for non-ascii is the charset, and that's the same problem for plaintext and HTML. You'll just have to set the right charset header, and I think he does that.

Ok, "TB asks you what to do and you choose 'text-only'" is the part I missed. In that case, I'd agree it definitely is a feature not to use flowed to convert that <pre>..</pre> to a plain text. Thanks for an explanation.

Yeah, anything outside US-ASCII. That was what I was wondering about.