Hawk Wings » plain text

Lock up Leopard Mail in three easy steps

Tim Gaden — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:16:34 +0000

On Apple Discussions Martin Marconcini has discovered a way to bring Mail.app to a screaming halt in three easy steps.

Frustrated by Mail’s tendency to freeze when he dragged anything onto Mail’s Dock icon, he went back and painstakingly restored his Mail installation step-by-step until the glitch re-emerged.

Here’s what he discovered (you can test it for yourself):

One: Set Mail’s New message default in the Composing preference pane to plain text.

Two: Add a signature to your email account in the Signatures Preference pane. Make sure that you select it at the bottom of the signature pane to be added to every new message by default:

Three: Drag an image or anything else onto Mail’s Dock icon.

That’s a big, 100%-repeatable train wreck for me.

It seems like a common configuration; it’s not restricted to dragging ClarisWorks documents onto the Dock icon when the signature contains a particular accented Laotian character. How does such a thing not emerge in internal testing? Perhaps I am too romantic about internal testing.

Anyway, happily, I am in the clear. All my signatures are just a few keystrokes away in TextExpander.

But Martin suggests some workarounds for those plagued by these freezes:

a) Use Rich Text (not an option if you use Blackberry or need plain text)
b) Use Plain Text but remove the signatures (can be a Pain In the A** if you use different business accounts like me with odd disclaimers that are a “must”).
c) Roll back to Safari 3.0.* and either use it or use Camino/Opera/Firefox/Etc. Could be a problem if you rely on Safari stuff like Inquisitor, 1Password, etc.
d) Don’t drag attachments to the dock icon…

On 8 April Apple acknowledged this as “a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering”. mail.app, apple mail, rich text, webkit?, plain text, dock, attachments, bug, signaturesSimilar Posts:

The campaign to end HTML email

Tim Gaden — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:38:21 +0000

Washington Post blogger Brian Krebs uses the recent release of a Windows security patch to fire up the campaign to end HTML email.

He reminds his readers that “viewing your e-mail in anything other than plain text mode is asking for trouble on a Windows computer.”

He then proceeds to list some of the reasons why HTML should be avoided, including better protection against phishing attacks, avoiding “spam touting graphic images from adult Web sites” and not seeing your own HTML emails end up in someone else’s spam folder. (See a much more comprehensive list of reasons on the Free Anti Spam web site.)

Instructions are provided on using plain text in Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, Thunderbird and Opera. These might be useful for Hawk Wings readers in a distressing work environment.

Mail.app users have at least three ways to deal with incoming HTML emails—see an earlier Hawk Wings post, “Viewing HTML messages in Apple Mail“).

I am a fan of the first, most brutal option myself, but I am also a realist. See further King Canute (Wikipedia ).

UPDATE: Nicholas takes a different view . “Arguing that email users should not have access to different fonts or colours is much like arguing that they should still be using the word processors of 1987 as well,” he suggests.

[Thanks, Michael]mail.app, apple mail, windows, outlook, html, plain text, thunderbird, opera, outlook expressSimilar Posts:

Mail.app rule to extract an email to a text file

Tim Gaden — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:57:26 +0000

On the Apple Discussion Boards, a poster called Cyclosaurus has provided an applescript which when activated by a rule in Mail.app will save an email to a plain text file on the Desktop.

This could be very handy.

To use it, all you need to do is copy the text from his posting (above), paste it into Script Editor, compile it and save it off as a script in some memorable place (I find that ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/ Mail is memorable).

Then you need to hook it up to a Mail rule. Here I am using it to extract bibliographical records of books for importing into Bookends or EndNote, two reference managers for academic writing.

The rule recognises the subject line that the library adds to these emails, extracts the info to a plain text file on the Desktop called slash.txt, tags it with the MailTags project for my work and dumps it into my mail archive. (A quick subject line search for “MARC record” will find them all again, so a rabbit warren of mailboxes is not required.)

The end result is a clean plain text file. The script appends any subsequently extracted emails to the end of the file:

This is unfortunately a hypothetical example. In real life I am not that organised or automated.

However, it gives you an idea of the applications to which the script could be put. Gathering a list of to-dos perhaps or saving a plain text copy of every email from your sweetheart. Or from a cyber-stalker. Or if set to “every message”, a full plain text archive of all the email you receive. Or to save a copy of every email that mentions Steve Jobs. Or whatever. mail.app, apple mail, rules, applescript, productivity, plain text, extract, email, tipsSimilar Posts:

Betalogue ponders slow death of plain text

Tim Gaden — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 14:34:14 +0000

Pierre Igot at Betalogue got the Red Hot Chilli Peppers promotional email from the iTunes Music Store today.

It prompts him to provide a good / cranky summary (depending on whether you are a plain text / HTML person) of reasons to dislike HTML emails.

He also wonders whether emails like this are a sign that plain-texters are on the verge of extinction:

…itâ€™s yet another sign that plain-text e-mail is becoming more and more neglected…. Sooner or later, I guess that I too will be forced to switch to HTML e-mail. It really annoys me, because I believe that my reasons for preferring plain-text e-mail are perfectly valid and will remain so for many years to come. But if plain-text e-mail becomes less and less usable, we simply wonâ€™t have any other alternative. And Apple will have a certain amount of responsibility in this.

email, plain text, html, RTF, mail.app, apple mail, itunesSimilar Posts:

View missing text in Mail.app messages

Tim Gaden — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:20:46 +0000

Over in the macOSXHints forum, highlandlaker wonders why text is missing from his emails:

I am using Mail 2.0 and System 10.4.5. Occasionally I receive an email message that is truncated. The first two or three sentences appear okay then it stops …. dead in its tracks !! Has anyone else experienced this anomaly and what can I do to correct it?

Some people on the Apple Discussion board have a similar problem.

Often (but not always) this is the result of a HTML rendering glitch in Mail.app. Mail is trying to render the message but can’t. The rest of the text is there, you just can’t see it.

If this happens to you, the fix is simple.

Emails often contain their text in a variety of formats. By default Apple Mail will display an emailâ€™s HTML content first if it exists, then the Rich Text content if HTML is not available. Lastly it will display plain text is there is nothing else.

If the HTML is not rendering properly, you can “force” Mail to show the plain text version using the keyboard shortcut â€œCommand-Option-Pâ€, or toggle through the available formats using â€œCommand-]â€ and â€œCommand-[â€. Most likely, the text will appear as you cycle through the available views.

Hawk Wings has some more tips for dealing with HTML emails.html, plain text, rendering, missing text, empty messages, keyboard shortcuts Similar Posts:

12 tips for better emailing – Guy Kawasaki

Tim Gaden — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 13:37:37 +0000

Guy Kawasaki , former Apple Fellow, Forbes.com columnist and venture capitalist, passed the time flying from Denver to San Francisco by knocking out twelve tips that will make you a better emailer.

The usual suspects, which it never hurts to read again, are there—sensible subject lines, plain text, short (ideal=5 sentences), avoid attachments—but there are two tips on the evils of FUQing (“Fabricating Unanswerable Questions”) that will make my emails better.email, tips, subject lines, plain text, attachments, Guy Kawasaki

Similar Posts:

Funny email from Apple

Tim Gaden — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:32:14 +0000

Tonight I received an email from Apple that tickled my funny bone.

I happened to be looking at my screen as MailAppetizer popped up its notification about the latest version of Apple‘s e-newsletter. It picks up the plain text version rather than the HTML version that I see in Mail.app by default.

Command-[ in Mail.app brought me the plain text version which reads:

Of course, Apple Mail doesn’t really have a problem with this and it’s a very laudable alert, but it gave me a chuckle all the same. Similar Posts:

Looking nice for Outlook users

Tim Gaden — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:52:52 +0000

Speaking of the odd things that Outlook can do, a poster at macOSXHints noticed — after complaints from Outlook-using workmates — that his emails were arriving hard-wrapped at a width of 72 characters per line.

This happens because of the particular way that Outlook reconstructs plain text messages sent in Apple Mail. Even if you have Rich Text set as your default format, your emails will appear this way in Outlook if they contain no Rich Text-specific formatting.

He posts a solution to this, using an almost invisible signature with Rich Text properties.Similar Posts:

HTML signatures in Mail (if you really must)

Tim Gaden — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 22:38:48 +0000

Someone has worked out how to add HTML signatures to Apple Mail posts.

As an old-fashioned plain-texter, I can’t bring myself to type out the process here, but you can read all about it on MacOSXHints.signatures, HTML, plain text, mail.app, apple mail, tipsSimilar Posts: