Email address handling

Email address handling

[Roman Belenov]

Is it possible to handle email addresses in articles, so that pressing
middle button on them will automatically make a new message to that
address ?

-- 
 							With regards, Roman.

Re: Email address handling

[Colin Marquardt]

* Roman Belenov <roman@nstl.nnov.ru> writes:

> Is it possible to handle email addresses in articles, so that pressing
> middle button on them will automatically make a new message to that
> address ?

At least there is a function for it: `gnus-article-mail':

  Send a reply to the address near point.
  If YANK is non-nil, include the original article.

Re: Email address handling

[Kai Großjohann]

Roman Belenov <roman@nstl.nnov.ru> writes:

> Is it possible to handle email addresses in articles, so that pressing
> middle button on them will automatically make a new message to that
> address ?

This already works by default for mailto URLs and for mail addresses
in headers.  I take it you want more?

kai
-- 
~/.signature: No such file or directory

Re: Email address handling

[Roman Belenov]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> This already works by default for mailto URLs and for mail addresses
> in headers.  I take it you want more?

Why doesn't it work for plain e-mail addresses in the body of the
article ?

-- 
 							With regards, Roman.

Re: Email address handling

[Kai Großjohann]

Roman Belenov <roman@nstl.nnov.ru> writes:

> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:
> 
> > This already works by default for mailto URLs and for mail addresses
> > in headers.  I take it you want more?
> 
> Why doesn't it work for plain e-mail addresses in the body of the
> article ?

I think this is because it uses a regexp to find them, and the regexp
doesn't find normal mail addresses in the body.  Doubtless it should
be easy to add this.  Hm.  Yes, there is the variable
gnus-button-alist which might help.

kai
-- 
~/.signature: No such file or directory

Re: Email address handling

[Roman Belenov]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> I think this is because it uses a regexp to find them, and the regexp
> doesn't find normal mail addresses in the body.  Doubtless it should
> be easy to add this.  Hm.  Yes, there is the variable
> gnus-button-alist which might help.

Thanks, I'll play with it to suit my needs.

-- 
 							With regards, Roman.

Re: Email address handling

[Jason Rumney]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Roman Belenov <roman@nstl.nnov.ru> writes:
> 
> > Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:
> > 
> > > This already works by default for mailto URLs and for mail addresses
> > > in headers.  I take it you want more?
> > 
> > Why doesn't it work for plain e-mail addresses in the body of the
> > article ?
> 
> I think this is because it uses a regexp to find them, and the regexp
> doesn't find normal mail addresses in the body.  Doubtless it should
> be easy to add this.  Hm.  Yes, there is the variable
> gnus-button-alist which might help.

I thought the reason this wasn't done was because it is impossible to
tell the difference between a Message-ID and an email address without
some context (like which header it appears in, or if it appears as a
mailto URL).

-- 
Jason Rumney <jasonr@altavista.net>

Re: Email address handling

[Kai Großjohann]

Jason Rumney <jasonr@altavista.net> writes:

> I thought the reason this wasn't done was because it is impossible to
> tell the difference between a Message-ID and an email address without
> some context (like which header it appears in, or if it appears as a
> mailto URL).

Sounds plausible.

kai
-- 
~/.signature: No such file or directory

Re: Email address handling

[Mike Fabian]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Roman Belenov <roman@nstl.nnov.ru> writes:
> 
> > Is it possible to handle email addresses in articles, so that pressing
> > middle button on them will automatically make a new message to that
> > address ?
> 
> This already works by default for mailto URLs and for mail addresses
> in headers.  I take it you want more?

It works indeed for mail addresses in headers.

But I have always wondered why `Gcc: nnml+archive:archive' isn't
inserted automatically when I click on such a header. Most other
commands to send mail insert the `Gcc:' header automatically.

Can this be configured?

-- 
Mike Fabian   <mike.fabian@gmx.de>   <mike@nozomi.rhein-neckar.de>

Re: Email address handling

[Randal L. Schwartz]

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>>>>> "Kai" == Kai Großjohann <Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE> writes:

Kai> I think this is because it uses a regexp to find them, and the regexp
Kai> doesn't find normal mail addresses in the body.  Doubtless it should
Kai> be easy to add this.  Hm.  Yes, there is the variable
Kai> gnus-button-alist which might help.

I think you mistyped "h a r d" as "easy" there.  The regex to match an
RFC822 email address is about 7000 characters long, and would take far
too long to scan each incoming message.  (I've got some friends
working on a similar Perl module, and are being likewise frustrated.)

For example:  fred!barney@stonehenge.com is a legitimate email address.
And so is that with included whitespace, as fred! barney@stonehenge.com,
but how do you distinguish that from "hey, fred! barney@stonehenge.com"
where only the "barney..." part is the email?

Nope.  The problem is a DWIM problem... there's not enough encoding
in the email message to correctly identify the sequence of characters
that *may* be an email address.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn@stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

Re: Email address handling

[Kai Großjohann]

Mike Fabian <mike.fabian@gmx.de> writes:

> But I have always wondered why `Gcc: nnml+archive:archive' isn't
> inserted automatically when I click on such a header. Most other
> commands to send mail insert the `Gcc:' header automatically.

Maybe hitting RET on a mailto URL invokes message-mail rather than
gnus-mail?  Message can in principle be used without Gnus, and when
you do that you don't get the normal Gnus features, of course.

Somebody has written some code such that you can set mail-user-agent
to some value which uses gnus-mail rather than message-mail in such
cases.  You may wish to search the Gnus and BBDB mailing list archives
for define-mail-user-agent.

kai
-- 
~/.signature: No such file or directory

Re: Email address handling

[Toby Speight]

Roman> Roman Belenov <URL:mailto:roman@nstl.nnov.ru>

0> In article <uk8kkx54l.fsf@nstl.nnov.ru>, Roman wrote:

Roman> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

>> This already works by default for mailto URLs and for mail addresses
>> in headers.  I take it you want more?

Roman> Why doesn't it work for plain e-mail addresses in the body of
Roman> the article?

Probably because they are indistinguishable from message-ids?

Re: Email address handling

[Colin Rafferty]

Randal L Schwartz writes:

>>>>>> "Kai" =3D=3D Kai Gro=DFjohann <Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE> writes:

Kai> I think this is because it uses a regexp to find them, and the regexp
Kai> doesn't find normal mail addresses in the body.  Doubtless it should
Kai> be easy to add this.  Hm.  Yes, there is the variable
Kai> gnus-button-alist which might help.

> I think you mistyped "h a r d" as "easy" there.  The regex to match an
> RFC822 email address is about 7000 characters long, and would take far
> too long to scan each incoming message.  (I've got some friends
> working on a similar Perl module, and are being likewise frustrated.)

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be close.

      "[-+_a-zA-Z0-9.]@[-+_a-zA-Z0-9][-+_a-zA-Z0-9.]*[-+_a-zA-Z0-9]"

Maybe add a couple of more non-word characters, and you should get 95%
of what we're looking for, and no mismatches (except message-ids).

-- 
Colin

Re: Email address handling

[Kai Großjohann]

Colin Rafferty <colin.rafferty@msdw.com> writes:

> Maybe add a couple of more non-word characters, and you should get 95%
> of what we're looking for, and no mismatches (except message-ids).

I think the problem is that message ids should also be clickable in
message bodies?

kai
-- 
~/.signature: No such file or directory

Re: Email address handling

[Colin Rafferty]

Kai Großjohann writes:
> Colin Rafferty <colin.rafferty@msdw.com> writes:

>> Maybe add a couple of more non-word characters, and you should get 95%
>> of what we're looking for, and no mismatches (except message-ids).

> I think the problem is that message ids should also be clickable in
> message bodies?

Yes, that is a different issue, but it seems to me that the ratio of
message-id/email in message bodies is significantly insignificant.

-- 
Colin

Re: Email address handling

[Steinar Bang]

>>>>> Colin Rafferty <colin.rafferty@msdw.com>:

>> I think the problem is that message ids should also be clickable in
>> message bodies?

> Yes, that is a different issue, but it seems to me that the ratio of
> message-id/email in message bodies is significantly insignificant.

Hm... I have seen many occasions where people have posted message-id's 
of other articles (mostly on news).  Many more than I have seen email
addresses I would like to use with a click.

Re: Email address handling

[Per Abrahamsen]

Toby Speight <Toby.Speight@streapadair.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> In article <uk8kkx54l.fsf@nstl.nnov.ru>, Roman wrote:

> Roman> Why doesn't it work for plain e-mail addresses in the body of
> Roman> the article?
> 
> Probably because they are indistinguishable from message-ids?

Yes, I wrote the original buttonization code, and that was my
motivation for not recognizing mail addresses.

Message-ids are recognized after specific keywords, such as "In
article", which is why the message-id in the second attribution line
is buttonized.

Perhaps, these days, we should get a popup asking whether to handle it
as a mail address or message-id?

Re: Email address handling

[Mike Fabian]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Mike Fabian <mike.fabian@gmx.de> writes:
> 
> > But I have always wondered why `Gcc: nnml+archive:archive' isn't
> > inserted automatically when I click on such a header. Most other
> > commands to send mail insert the `Gcc:' header automatically.
> 
> Maybe hitting RET on a mailto URL invokes message-mail rather than
> gnus-mail?  Message can in principle be used without Gnus, and when
> you do that you don't get the normal Gnus features, of course.
> 
> Somebody has written some code such that you can set mail-user-agent
> to some value which uses gnus-mail rather than message-mail in such
> cases.  You may wish to search the Gnus and BBDB mailing list archives
> for define-mail-user-agent.

Thank you, I found a message in the archive explaining how to do this: 

    From: Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>
    Subject: Success?  Potential gnus-user-agent definition.
    Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.gnus
    Date: 17 Jun 1999 00:00:00 GMT

In this message Rob writes that define-mail-user-agent doesn't help
with bbdb:

RB> Note that it doesn't help with bbdb, but after further
RB> investigation, I discovered that that's because the version of
RB> bbdb doesn't use compose-mail, but the docs claim it will.  When
RB> it does, everything will work fine.

For the same reason it doesn't work when starting a mail by clicking
on a email-address in the headers of an *Article* buffer.
`compose-mail' is not used in this case either (I checked by
instrumenting `compose-mail' for Edebug and see whether it stops
there. It doesn't.)

Maybe this is an oversight and `compose-mail' should be used in this
case?

-- 
Mike Fabian   <mike.fabian@gmx.de>   <mike@nozomi.rhein-neckar.de>

Re: Email address handling

[Kai Großjohann]

Mike Fabian <mike.fabian@gmx.de> writes:

> Maybe this is an oversight and `compose-mail' should be used in this
> case?

I think so.

kai
-- 
~/.signature: No such file or directory

Re: Email address handling

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:

> > Roman> Why doesn't it work for plain e-mail addresses in the body of
> > Roman> the article?
> > 
> > Probably because they are indistinguishable from message-ids?
> 
> Yes, I wrote the original buttonization code, and that was my
> motivation for not recognizing mail addresses.
> 
> Message-ids are recognized after specific keywords, such as "In
> article", which is why the message-id in the second attribution line
> is buttonized.
> 
> Perhaps, these days, we should get a popup asking whether to handle it
> as a mail address or message-id?

That would make sense.  Anybody want to write the code?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen