nnimap can't deal with text/html

nnimap can't deal with text/html

[Chris Majewski]

I  can't  read  mail  containing  only a  text/html  segment  (and  no
text/plain segment).  I know such  mail is antisocial  but hotmail.com
seems to generate it and I happen to know people who use hotmail. 

Here's what happens when I select such a message in the Summary buffer:

font-spatial-to-canonical: Wrong type argument: number-or-marker-p, nil

Here's what I've tried:

* debugging font-spatial-to-canonical
that was fun,  but not educational. seems something  returns nil where
it shouldn't and I don't know how to fix it. 

* upgrading w3 
downloaded and built something called w3-4.0pre.47, which nota bene
still gives me a w3-version of 
WWW 4.0pre.46, URL p4.0pre.46, MM 1.96
yes,  I  checked  for  shadowed  whatchamacallits  as  a  deja  search
suggested, I don't have any, so that should be fine. 

What now? 

-chris