The technique used in that script tricks Entourage into accessing the Internet Explorer 5 HTML engine to take over, as it does when you receive "complex HTML" messages, which is just handy way of saying "anything too complex for Entourage itself to handle". Those come into basically two categories: HTML messages with web graphics, and messages with tables. By pretending that there's a table in the message source code, it gets the IE HTML engine take over. (I'm being vague here because I don't honestly know how this happens.) That encodes the bit of HTML coding I use in the script in proper HTML fashion as a real hyperlink (i.e. you see descriptive underlinked text which takes you to a "hidden" URL) instead displaying the HTML coding itself. As I hoped, it also fools Outlook, and all receiving email readers, into gearing their own HTML engines (or maybe Outlook uses IE too - I have no idea) into action. My thought was that Outlook must display complex HTML OK - there couldn't possibly be a bug with complex HTML or no one would ever use it. In fact, its HTML engine probably expects to see hyperlinks only in this form, and that must be why it doesn't know how to underlink plain old URLs. It needs the <a /a> tags around them to make sense of them. As I said earlier, Outlook Windows uses something called RTF - Rich Text Format - just like TextEdit and Mail.app in OS X do - for formatted text without graphics, rather than full-scale HTML. In RTF, as in plain text - Outlook knows what to do with bare URLs. But in its own HTML, it doesn't. It needs full HTML encoding with all the links. My script provides those. So - although full-scale HTML is overkill for simply providing links - it works here.
I'm sorry if the explanation isn't entirely clear, But since I don't completely know what I'm talking about, it's the best I can do. Anyway, I'm glad it works as I thought it might.
--
Paul Berkowitz
From: markhowe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: "Entourage:mac Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 11:10:22 +0100
To: "Entourage:mac Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hyperlinks
Paul
Thanks for your further help. Have tried the script and it works – even for me. Thank you. But what Is the story with links. I’m coming straight from my own HTML file with local links. Have tried attaching the linked files manually to the Entourage mail BEFORE running the script but to no avail. Give me a clue please! I don’t understand how the read-me with your script ties in with your comments below about having a website? Or am I being stupid? Thanks.
Mark Howe
Lighting Cameraman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
07932 166193
From: Paul Berkowitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: "Entourage:mac Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 19:19:12 -0800
To: Entourage Mac Talk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hyperlinks
On 4/2/02 12:41 PM, "markhowe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Thanks guys for those responses. The plain text does work – have just just
> initiated exhaustive testing sending messages to myself between Softwindows
> and OS 9 – so that’s good to know (even if it means losing good layout, at
> least the links will now work).
>
> Do you know if there are any shareware programmes for sending full html
> emails. I only know of one piece of software which costs about £400. Or is
> it something to avoid because of compatibility problems?
Even though you quoted the _wrong_ reply to your message in this response
instead of my correct reply which you found helpful, I'll help again. ;-) If
you have a website where you can upload your HTML pages so they can be
accessed by a real URL, then you can use the FREE script
Send Complex HTML
(Entourage version) available at
AppleScript Central
<http://www.applescriptcentral.com/>
to do what you want in Entourage.
--
Paul Berkowitz
