Re: HTML mail + PDF attachments
On Thu 26 Mar 2020 at 03:03:55 (+0000), Russell L. Harris wrote:
> At the moment I am running neo-mutt on Debian 9. Once or twice a day
> I receive a HTML message, typically with a PDF file as an attachment.
> Picking out and viewing the links and attachments always is a hassle,
> and sometimes is rather difficult.
It sounds, from some replies to this thread, as if these are not
attachments, but are references contained in the HTML.
(I presume that you know about "v", to list attachments, and that
attachments can be email-type entities on which you can use "v"
again. List digests are like this.)
> Rather than hassle with mutt, I hoped to install an auxiliary mail
> client with GUI (such as Thunderbird) with which I could open such
> messages, view the links, and print the attachments.
I read most HTML-only emails, and the mixed ones where the text
version is seemingly unrelated to the HTML one, with "v" and then
"m" to activate a line from my mutt's mailcap_path:
text/html; /usr/bin/lynx -force-html -localhost -stdin
The "l" command in lynx will display the links in the HTML. On
security grounds, I generally prefer not to visit them under my
own username, so I paste them into a browser.
> But Thunderbird is demanding the URLs of POP and SMPT servers, and I
> do not wish to allow Thunderbird to mess around with my mail, other
> than viewing specific messages.
>
> One approach would be to get a mail account strictly for this purpose,
> and set up a complete Thunderbird mail system using that account.
>
> But is there a better solution?
Another method I use, for example when shops send discount coupons in
HTML emails, is to type "v" in mutt and save only the HTML part in
/tmp/foo, then type Ctrl-o in a browser and open /tmp/foo.
Whether any of these solutions is better depends on how frequently you
use them, what the trade-off is, how much you can automate them, etc.
Note that, for real attachments, and HTML emails read by lynx as
above, nobody knows you've opened the email. Once you move to the
browser, then the sender knows. Side effects are not always obvious;
in the former case, banks might complain that you're not reading their
"important" missives, and companies might stop sending you their
marketing junk. In the latter case, there are obvious security implications.
Cheers,
David.
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