Re: [Pan-users] html

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 12:21:40AM +0000, Duncan wrote:

> However, there HAS been discussion of the possibility of implementing a 
> simple "dumb tag stripper" mode (which will actually need to be 
> reasonably smart if it's not to mistake "meta-observation" tags such as 
> those in my first paragraph for HTML/XML tags and strip them), much as 
> claws-mail for example does to /surprisingly/ good effect.

+1000 on this idea.

Alas, the barbarians have overrun civilization, and we have to live with 
them. Its 2012 and high time that Pan can display at least a textified 
version of HTML posts, instead of the raw HTML.

mutt does something very similar for email. It can be configured to use 
a console browser like links, lynx or w3m to dump the html to text, then 
display that.

http://jasonwryan.com/blog/2012/05/12/mutt/

I see no reason why Pan couldn't use an external dependancy for this 
like mutt does. As you suggest, stripping tags is hard, there's no 
reason why Pan should be forced to implement its own when it can push 
the hard part onto existing tools, of which there are already at least 
three.


> Personally, I was rather negative on this whole idea, until I saw how 
> effectively claws-mail implemented it (after having little choice but to 
> switch to /something/ other than the kmail I'd been using for nearly a 
> decade, when they akonadified and broke everything,

Check out Trinity, a.k.a. TDE, a.k.a. "KDE 3, back when it was good, 
reborn ascendant!!!". I haven't installed it myself (yet), but I'm 
impressed by the health of the small but dedicated community grown up 
around it. Naturally the KDE 4 people hate it with a passion.



-- 
Steven