[TAG] Re: mailto:tag at lists.linuxgazette.net?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%20120%5D%20help%20wanted%20%233

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 10:16:12AM +0100, Karl-Heinz Herrmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:32:31 -0500
> "Benjamin A. Okopnik" <ben at linuxgazette.net> wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 03:44:38PM -0700, s. keeling wrote:
> > > What the @#$%^& is that I see in the subject line?  That's how an
> > > answer gang reply-to: tag looks once copied from Firefox into mutt.
> > > Isn't there a better way to do this?  Do I really have to dig around
> > > in Firefox to figure out how to get it to call mutt correctly?
> 
> 
> I wanted to check if this not-decoding is browser specific but frankly I
> can't find that Reply-To link anywhere on linuxgazette.net (Answergang,
> Asking TAG FAQ). None of the mail-to tags there seem to have more than
> an unencoded recipient address (in opera).
> 
> I can use any way of getting that info (copy email, copy link-adress
> or let it open a mailer directly (sylpheed) and see nothing enocded - I
> do not see any preset suject either. On none of the Tag articles I
> checked Nov/Oct 2005 is a link where I could write back comments to tag,
> that's where I would have expected a preset Subject line. The linked
> mail-bag on http://linuxgazette.net/119/tag/3.html has no clickable
> links at all (...(at)... enocidng).
> 
> So what are you talking about?

We're talking about *you*. :)

``
ben at Fenrir:~$ GET linuxgazette.net/120/lg_mail.html|grep 'Karl-Heinz.*subject='
<BR>Forwarded by Karl-Heinz Herrmann (<a href="mailto:tag at lists.linuxgazette.net?subject=%20Re%3A%20%5BLG%20120%5D%20help%20wanted%20%233">The Answer Gang</a>)
''

These links are generated by Heather's scripts for the links in the
"Wanted" section. Clicking them, in a large variety of browsers, will
result in the browser's email client coming up with the address for TAG
as well as a subject that points back to the issue and the specific
item.

Obviously, this is a very useful sort of thing for browsers that process
their own "mailto:"s; however, the querent has pointed out that Firefox
does _not_ chew this particular brand of toy. In fact, it makes the
process rather painful (as the MozEX page at mozdev says, handling
external links is functionality that should have been built into Firefox
itself, and it is simply crazy that it should require an extension to do
so.)

I think that, between my Perl script and S. Keeling's modification of
the prefs.js file, the issue is pretty well handled... but I agree with
the author of MozEX - it shouldn't have come up in the first place.


* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://linuxgazette.net *