On Saturday, February 8, 2003, at 10:56 PM, Ward Oldham queried: > You're indicating this is an application limitation which is found in > the specific email client, i.e. Mail.app (OS X) or Outlook Express (OS > 9). ?What I understood from Mark is links are 100% functional when > sending from Mac user to Mac user, no matter what email client you use > (to a point). ?Still, it doesn't seem to be an application related > issue.
Here's how I understand it, and I'd like to be shown wrong because this is something that's long irritated me about the standard e-mailers on the Mac. Most styled e-mail is sent in HTML format. It's pretty much the same kind of HTML file that your Web browser interprets. But, the only HTML tags the standard Mac e-mailers know how to insert are those for styling -- not anchors. Anchors are what create the clickable links on Web pages without explicitly showing the referenced URL. The type of HTML construct I'm writing about is something like <a href="http://lml.homedns.org";>this</a>. It would appear as only this, if a true anchor were present. Some e-mailers can insert anchors. Mozilla, Navigator and Entourage are among them. To complicate this, for the last five years or so, all versions of Mac OS have had the capability to recognize things that look like URLs. Most of the e-mail programs make use of this service to fake anchors within a text stream. That's why things like <http://lml.homedns.org> often become live links in the e-mail, even when it is sent as plain text. This is an operating system service provided by Apple, and is often confused with links within the mail. After all this, I have a prediction. Windows has long had a pretty good HTML services shipped with the operating system within the libraries that support Internet Explorer. (Whether they're actually part of the Windows operating system is still being argued in court.) Apple has been way behind in this area for a long time, and that's why Apple's own programs haven't really done much sophisticated HTML work. All this changes with Safari. The HTML interpreter in Safari is a library that will be available to all programs. We'll soon start seeing more complete HTML support in Apple's programs such as Mail and iChat. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2336 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20030208/fb31683e/attachment.bin
