[conspire] Links

[Nick Moffitt]

Rick Moen:
> Quoting Ehud Kaldor (ehud.kaldor at gmail.com):
> >    [1]http://www.niceURL/trust/me/i/am/REST
> 
> However, all the people who are so reckless that they read e-mail in
> rendered HTML format without even verifying where embedded URLs point
> to have been sent away on the Golgafrincham 'B' ark, so they're no
> longer an issue.
> 
> $ grep 'text/html' .mailcap
> text/html; /usr/bin/lynx -dump -force_html '%s'; copiousoutput;
> description=HTML Text; nametemplate=%s.html

Lynx is kind of old and non-standard, but still a pretty good tool for
this.  For a while my .mailcap had elinks, then w3m.  I've finally
decided that I don't care about non-utf8 HTML mail and switched to
pandoc:

	text/html; /usr/bin/pandoc -f html -t markdown '%s'; copiousoutput

It turns HTML into markdown, as follows:

Ehud Kaldor:
> the text in the link is meaningless, as it can hold some other address.
> like this:\
> 
> [http://www.niceURL/trust/me/i/am/REST](http://www.verybadURL/fooled/you/to/click/me)
> \
> 
> > Its called \*REST\* (representational state transfer)\
> >  \
> >  Yeah, these links sure look spammy ;-)

The backslashes for the raw BRs and quoted asterisk-emphasis are silly
(real emphasis tags get turned to bare asterisks like you or I would
use), but you have to admit that the link format is nice and terse (once
you get your markdown instincts primed to remind you which side is
which).

People who send HTML-only mail with silly Windows-codepage nonsense are
typically spammers and people I didn't want to read anyway.  Preferring
the text portion of multipart/alternative messages is the best policy.
Shows you only the absurd chaff in spams, for a start!

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