Re: View HTML Mail in Browser

[Valtteri Vuorikoski <vuori@notcom.org>]

Felix Natter <fnatter@gmx.net> writes:

> Is there a modern best practice for reading non-trivial HTML mails?  I
> know about shr, but it often fails.

I don't know about best practice, but I use Thunderbird to open
problematic mail. This is nicer than a browser since external images and
Javascript are disabled by default, and attachments can also be accessed
in the GUI application.

First, a shell script called thunderbird-open-file (I also use this with
the file indexer Recoll for opening mail files so it has some extra
functionality):

#!/bin/bash

if [[ -z "$1" ]] ; then
  echo "usage: thunderbird-open-file <file>" >&2
  exit 1
fi

umask 077
f=/tmp/tb-open-$$.eml
if [[ "$1" == "-" ]] ; then
  rm -f "$f"
  cat > "$f"
else
  cp --remove-destination "$1" $f
fi
( thunderbird -file $f ; rm -f $f ) < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &


Next, the gnus integration (copypasta from gnus-summary-pipe-to-muttprint):

(defun gnus-summary-pipe-to-thunderbird (&optional command)
  "Pipe this article to Thunderbird with a helper script."
  (unless (stringp command)
    (setq command (expand-file-name "~/bin/thunderbird-open-file -")))
  (let ((gnus-summary-pipe-output-default-command
         gnus-summary-pipe-output-default-command))
    (gnus-summary-save-in-pipe command t)))

(defun gnus-summary-thunderbird (&optional arg)
  "Show the current article using Thunderbird."
  (interactive "P")
  (require 'gnus-art)
  (let ((gnus-default-article-saver 'gnus-summary-pipe-to-thunderbird))
    (gnus-summary-save-article arg t)))

(define-key gnus-summary-mode-map (kbd "O t") 'gnus-summary-thunderbird)
(define-key gnus-article-mode-map (kbd "O t") 'gnus-summary-thunderbird)


Tip if you end up rolling your own instead: the file name passed to
"thunderbird -file" must end with ".eml". Otherwise it tries to be smart
and falls over. 

 -Valtteri