Mail.app problem

External Since: Feb 18, 2004 Posts: 114

I'm running 10.2.6 on a G4 with plentyoRam. I use the standard
Mail.app. It's been working fine.

I subscribe to ACM Technews which sends out synopses of news that might
be of interest with links to their pages with more details.

It's been working fine, until this week. Suddenly the appearance
changed and the links don't work... They're underlined, as usual, but
clicking on them doesn't open them in my browser (Safari) -- holding
down the button to bring up the context menu shows the "follow link"
option is greyed out -- they're not being recognized as links, it seems.

So, I opened the mbox in xemacs and looked to see what was different.

The old messages have:
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72)
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

and a link is like:
> Top Stories for Monday, December 15, 2003:
 > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html</font" target="_blank">http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html</font</a>>

The new messages have:
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72)
> Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01C3C4CC.0532BE90"

and the "same" link is like:
> Top Stories for Wednesday, December 17, 2003:
 > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html</font" target="_blank">http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html</font</a>>
(i.e. no significant change).

Furthermore, the NextPart... has

> Content-Type: text/html;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

and contains the same message, html encoded, with
header:

> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
> <HTML>
> <HEAD>
> <META HTTP-EQUIV=3D"Content-Type" CONTENT=3D"text/html; =
> charset=3Diso-8859-1">
> <META NAME=3D"Generator" CONTENT=3D"MS Exchange Server version =
> 5.5.2653.12">
> <TITLE>ACM TechNews - Wednesday, December 17, 2003</TITLE>
> </HEAD>
> <BODY>
> 

and the link as:
> Top Stories for Wednesday, December =
> 17, 2003:
> <A =
> HREF=3D"http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html" =
> TARGET=3D"_blank">http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html</A><=
> /FONT>
> 

All that seems approximately reasonable, so what's the problem?

However, what's with the '3D's stuffed in there?

Is this a bug in Mail.app, in the wonderful MS Exchange Server, in
Safari, in me, or what?

joe

External Since: Aug 07, 2003 Posts: 38

Joe Davison <haltingNOSPAM DeleteThis @comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I'm running 10.2.6 on a G4 with plentyoRam. I use the standard
> Mail.app. It's been working fine.
>
> I subscribe to ACM Technews which sends out synopses of news that might
> be of interest with links to their pages with more details.
>
> and the "same" link is like:
 > > Top Stories for Wednesday, December 17, 2003:
 > > <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html</font" target="_blank">http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html</font</a>>
> (i.e. no significant change).
>
> Furthermore, the NextPart... has
>
 > > Content-Type: text/html;
 > > charset="iso-8859-1"
 > > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

I'm using the Mail.app on OS X 10.3.2 as of today and I get the ACM
Technews too. Not having any problems with the links. However,
The copy of the Technews I receive from the ACM is not in html.
It comes to me in plain text. I can forward you a December 10th,
copy of the Technews that I got if you like. Just drop me an email
and I'll forward it to you.
--
John J. Rushford
j j r { a t } a l i s a { d o t } o r g
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.cs.du.edu/~jjr" target="_blank">http://www.cs.du.edu/~jjr</a>