Re: Editing email replies

[Barry Margolin]

In article <k7m8uzl3.fsf@bitstream.com>, Peter Davis  <pd@world.std.com> wrote:
>
>Barry Margolin <barmar@genuity.net> writes:
>> In article <erBb9.37325$kp.567963@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>,
>> pd <pd@world.std.com> wrote:
>> >I've been thinking about how to edit replies to MIME messages that use
>> >multipart/alternative.  For example, suppose the message has a text/plain
>> >alternative and a text/html alternative, as shown below.  When I insert some
>> >plain text in my reply, I'd really like the resulting message to have the
>> >two alternatives for the text before my insertion, then my insertion in
>> >plain text, and then the two alternatives after my insertion.
>> >
>> >In other words,  I want to go from:
>> >
>> >    multipart/alternative
>> >        text/plain
>> >        text/html
>> >
>> >to
>> >
>> >    multipart/mixed
>> >        multipart/alternative
>> >            text/plain
>> >            text/html
>> >        text/plain <--- my reply!
>> >        multipart/alternative
>> >            text/plain
>> >            text/html
>> 
>> This seems like it would be extremely difficult to automate, because Emacs
>> would have to determine which parts of the plain and HTML alternatives
>> correspond to each other, so that it can find the correct dividing points.
>
>I agree that it seems difficult.  Yet some e-mail programs do this (or
>something like this, I guess).  If someone sends me a message with
>blue, sans-serif text, I can reply and put comments interspersed with
>that text.  The resulting message still has the original sender's text
>in blue, sans-serif text, and my comments interspersed in Courier (or
>some other plain text font).

My guess is they're doing the following:

Discard the plain text
Render the HTML into a buffer
Add a quoting prefix to the buffer
Let you edit the buffer, word-processor style
Turn the buffer back into HTML and plain text alternatives.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
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