Re: View HTML Mail in Browser

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Felix Natter <fnatter@gmx.net> writes:

> hi Andreas,
>
> thanks for the reply.
>
> Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> writes:
>> On Feb 06 2021, Felix Natter wrote:
>>
>>> Is there a modern best practice for reading non-trivial HTML mails?  I
>>> know about shr, but it often fails.
>>
>> How about K H (gnus-article-browse-html-article)?
>
> --------
> View "text/html" parts of the current article with a WWW browser.
> Inline images embedded in a message using the cid scheme, as they are
> generally considered to be safe, will be processed properly.
> The message header is added to the beginning of every html part unless
> the prefix argument ARG is given.
>
> If you always want to display HTML parts in the browser, set
> ‘mm-text-html-renderer’ to nil.
> --------
>
> Setting (setq mm-text-html-renderer nil) works, but it will open *all*
> mails in the browser.
>
> So I tried with a local variable:
>
> --------
> (defun my-gnus-article-browse-html-article ()
>   ""
>   (interactive)
>   (let ((mm-text-html-renderer nil))
>     (gnus-article-browse-html-article)))
> --------
>
> -> this blocks ("waiting for external displayer to die...")
>
> Next I tried:
>
> --------
> (add-to-list 'mm-text-html-renderer-alist
>              '(ff . browse-url-firefox-new-tab))
> (defun my-gnus-article-browse-html-article ()
>   ""
>   (interactive)
>   (let ((mm-text-html-renderer 'ff))
>     (gnus-article-browse-html-article)))
> --------
>
> -> this gives an error like
> shell-command-to-string: Wrong type argument: characterp, #<buffer
> *mm*-455001>
>
> Finally I tried to create a new thread to get around the blocking
> problem:
>
> --------
> (defun my-gnus-article-browse-html-article ()
>   ""
>   (interactive)
>   (make-thread
>    (lambda ()
>      (let ((mm-text-html-renderer nil))
>        (gnus-article-browse-html-article)))))
> --------
>
> This works better than the first solution, but it doesn't work perfectly
> (blocks for some seconds, saves the mail multiple times and opens it
> multiple times in the browser).
>
> Any idea?

I've never had to do anything but:

(setq browse-url-browser-function #'browse-url-firefox)

And even there I probably could have left it at its default value of
`browse-url-default-browser', which looks like it would have found
firefox anyway.

You can look at the values of `browse-url-(default-)handlers', there
might be something funny happening there.

Eric