After 20+ years of using PCs and, therefore, various e-mail clients, I think KMail is the the best e-mail application ever produced and nearly perfect in every way, EXCEPT it can't properly handle and forward HTML mail.

I do prefer plain text, BUT over 90% of the e-mail I receive each day, from both individuals and corporations, is in the HTML format.

Is it possible that someday KMail will properly be able to handle HTML mail so I can stop having to moving such mail to Thunderbird to be able to forward it on in its original format?

Thanks.

Having just tested it, I understand that, if a HTML and a text version of the message are available, KMail will prefer the plain text version - which makes sense, since you don't want to be forwarding malicious E-mails around.

However, delete the text part of the message, forward the message again and you get something like this. I don't see what the problem is: the HTML is formatted in exactly the same way. In fact, I'm sure all it's done is copied the HTML message straight into the forwarded message.

There are two ways of forwarding if you hold down the Forward button - Forward as Attachment and Forward Inline.

If you forward inline, your HTML breaks. If you Forward as Attachment, the original message is preserved completely, like in Madman's screenshot above. Forward as Attachment is the default for me.

Alec wrote:There are two ways of forwarding if you hold down the Forward button - Forward as Attachment and Forward Inline.

If you forward inline, your HTML breaks. If you Forward as Attachment, the original message is preserved completely, like in Madman's screenshot above. Forward as Attachment is the default for me.

Yes, but I don't want to send it as an attachment. I want to be able to edit out my e-mail address and any others before sending it on. This is easily be done in Thunderbird, SeaMonkey Mail, Evolution, and, even, believe it or not, in the latest version Opera Mail (M2) in Opera 10.

KMail often doesn't even display HTML mail correctly but breaks it up, separating the images from the text, or, it displays it correctly, but then shows the images in the messages, again, a second time, below the main text. Other than that it has a lot going for it, but in today's world
where computers users want and expect "color," not being able to properly
handle HTML is a major negative for most users. You have to give them
what they want or they will take their "business" elsewhere.

Please note that the PIM team is indeed aware about it, and many problems exist that prevent it from being done ( the underlying infrastructure supports it, it is just broken at some point in the forwarding chain.

If it will be fixed at any point, it will likely be when the KMail port to Akonadi is finished ( no timeline available at this point, definitely not 4.4 though )

For background: Kmail HTML Format [July 2006]

I received an email from my friend. When I replier it and I make my reply in bold letter or has a color on it, the quoted message (email of my friend, just below my email) became in double space.

Is there a way to make it in single space even I used HTML in my reply ?

Yes, you're right. I was able to reproduce this problem. It seems kmail wraps every single line into <p></p> tags. Seems to be a bug.

Kmail's html support when composing messages is not very good and the generated html code is very very ugly. There are already several bugs filed about this in KDE's bug tracking system. But I suppose there won't be any big changes to kmail's html support before KDE 4.

The main problem since 2006 is to not be able to identify when switching from Thunderbird to Kmail is really possible without headaches.
I have tested Kmail for some weeks, but html code generated by Kmail is really so ugly and badly managed that I am now back to Thunderbird.

HTML formatting bugs are same bugs as Kjots formatting bugs already identified and reported for months.
Sure, KDE4.4 or 4.5 will improve Kmail one day.

I'll just put in my 2cents that for a variety of reasons I care less about html email. Most of what I get is advertising and bs. I do not have problems with replying, forwarding or reading it. Please do make kmail into another Tbird/Outlook clone.

Since I use kmail (it is about 5 years) there was ALWAYS the same problem with forwarding HTML messages. Developers are still asleep . I wish to use KMAIL but I can't. All knows email client are able to send resend forward HTML message except KMAIL. Please, do something.

I'm giving Kontact a lookover right now because I want a more integrated PIM solution. Kontact is the best I've seen, anywhere... except for this. And it's not trivial. I agree... text-based e-mail is better. Doesn't matter, though. Probably 95% of the e-mails I receive... and must reply to... are HTML. This is a serious problem.

Yes, very serious. Here I sit with 4.4.1 and it still can't do something pretty basic. Its got a LOT of wiz bang stuff in the back end that makes it stand *far* apart from other mail clients, but something this basic should've been working ages ago.

M.

L_V wrote:HTML formatting bugs are same bugs as Kjots formatting bugs already identified and reported for months.
Sure, KDE4.4 or 4.5 will improve Kmail one day.

Wonder if that's a problem with the rich-text input widget, then :/

The rich text editor is provided as part of Qt I believe, and has limited html support.

as mentioned in posts before:
KMail is great mail client for reading and managing e-mails,
but if you want to send or reply to some (corporate) e-mail, you prefer to use any other client than KMail because of HTML handling in inline new/reply/forward e-mails. (I prefer Evolution)

It is great, that you can write HTML e-mails in KDE4's KMail (compared to KDE3.5), but there are still much things you have to learn from others.

kajkoz wrote: Developers are still asleep . I wish to use KMAIL but I can't. All knows email client are able to send resend forward HTML message except KMAIL.

I am afraid that developers are now more concerned by debugging akonadi/nepomuk/mysql/soprano than focused on features at user level.
I suppose the target is mainly to make a working kmail/kaddressbook for KDE4.5.1.
User features will come later.

I've always preferred plain-text e-mails too. But moving more into "enterprise world", people expect nicer e-mails and they move around many rich-text content (eg. tables, HTML-invitations, ...) in their e-mails. So I've discovered that KMail cannot handle them and actually "breaks" the content when replying - removes HTML-part and sends back text-only (making impossible for other parties to get back the original content). So this has become a very big interoperability problem for me too.

I wonder will it be "fixed" in KMail2? I really love KDE products for their speed and customizeability, so I want NOT to migrate from KMail to Thunderbird