Hi all,
I want to send a rich-text mail message from a Notes client to a non-Notes user on the
Internet. Then I want that user to send the message back to a Notes user. And I want the complete fidelity of the message to be preserved.
Now, I know this process will preserve standard formatting, such as bold and colors. But I want to also preserve everything that might be in the Notes mail, such as text popups, buttons with LotusScript behind them, action hotspots, etc. My understand is that this is not possible. When the message is converted for routing to the non-Notes mail system, MIME/HTML has no way to represent these extended rich-text features.
Can anyone confirm this? I will be testing it, but want to get feedback from the forum also.
(I found some threads that were vaguely related to this, but not exactly.)
TIA,
Chuck Connell
www.chc-3.com
Subject: Re: Notes to MIME to Notes, with full fidelity ?
Well, fundamentally you can not assure the described functionality without the control of the email client environment of the opposite side!
Btw. all internet e-mail is MIME coded, unless it is pure RFC 822 only.
However the content of the MIME can be formatted using HTML or it can also contain the version of RTF which Notes historically uses. For the compatibility reasons the HTML is probably more widely used today, for the reasons you require the RTF is necessary.
Than you should know that MIME is capable to transfer the same message in several representations at the same time. Eg. the same message can be sent as the plain text, RTF and HTML - all 3 inside one e-mail message. The viewer of the receiving side shall determine which representation is able to display and shows only that version.
Well, if the receiving side does not receive RTF well than the first difficulty which you have is to convince Domino server (or Notes client) to send several representations at the same time. Normally Domino/Notes send only one representation. Some plugin (not the trivial one) into Notes/Domino is necessary I guess.
However there is really no way how you can assure what shall happen on the opposite side. This is because there is no standard and obligation of the answering internet email client to answer in all representations which the client received. The opposite client is likely to answer in that format which he understood and displayed. It would be also very difficult to keep the consistency of the answer in several representations.
Thus what you require is really impossible but not because of bad Notes features but because of the essential differences of the formats.
You generaly have these options:
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to stress the opposite side to get the Notes client too,
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check some other email clients capable to receive and answer in RTF and not to lose the sections during the entire communication (try&fail process), than the opposite side must again use such a client,
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change the architecture of your application a bit, convert it into the web application and send the opposite side only the URL where to login to read the mail etc…,
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give up the sections…
Subject: Notes to MIME to Notes, with full fidelity ?
Chuck,
It isn’t available, won’t ever be available, and basically couldn’t be available. I know, because our company has put a lot of time into doing a better job than IBM with regards to the translation and round tripping for use in our CoexEdit product, as well as with Midas, but there just isn’t any way to represent the finer points of rich text in MIME, or vice-versa.
Tell you what. Take a standard page of any great work of English Literature, and find someone who can translate it to Spanish, or French or Greek or German, and then translate it back. It will have changed, usually quite a bit. Translation=loss. It is that simple. The closest you could come would be to have a special MIME part which had all the CD records stored, and even that would cause loss, plus remove any chance of editing the MIME and preserving what wasn’t edited.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. I’d be happy to work with you on a “better than IBM” approach, but only if you understand the basic limitations.
Subject: Clarifying one point…
Just to clarify one item… I know that the display of the email on the non-Notes system will lose advanced features. (Someone reading the mail on MS Outlook won’t see a LotusScript button.) I can live with that. What I really want is that when the msg is mailed back to a Notes user, the advanced features return. (Because they were buried, unused, somewhere in the message.)
Chuck