sendmail, html and non-Unix network path

[Tom Weinstock_1]

Hi all!

I am hoping someone can help with this issue I am having in sending HTML e-mails from Unix to Outlook. I have everything working great, except that when I try to specify a link from the HTML e-mail to a network server, I am losing some of the \'s in the network path. I have tried using 4 \'s so that the path starts with \\servername, but it is still only outputting one \ to Outlook. The unix file that's created looks perfectly fine. Here is the actual output to the Unix file and to Outlook (when using "view source"):

Unix file:
023234

What Outlook is getting:
023234

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks much!
Tom

[Mark Greene_1]

How are you sending it? What MTA, and what method of getting to the MTA?

mark

[Tom Weinstock_1]

"(Address info... HTML stuff )" | sendmail -t

[Mark Greene_1 · Accepted solution]

Have you tried using mailx instead? Build the file, then do something like:

mailx -s "subject here" address@domain.xxx < file.html


and see if this improves your results.

mark

[Tom Weinstock_1]

Well, it works - kind of - I see that correct path, etc...but it is not formatted HTML...it's just the raw source code.

I appreciate your suggestions!

Tom

[Mark Greene_1]

Anothet thought... maybe try the mailx with the -m option to not mime encode it, just to see what outlook does with the file then.

I don't have outlook running here, otherwise I'd test this myself.

mark

[Tom Weinstock_1]

Same results. Thanks though.

[Radim Jarosek]

Hi Tom,

Coud you give me a hint how you did send html format to outlook ?

Thx

Radim

[Frank Slootweg]

Please post *exactly* how you generate this mail on the HP-UX side. Your example in your second response is incomplete and invalid.

To me it looks like the "\" is interpreted as an escape character, i.e. for example
echo "\\"
wil output a single backslash because the first one means to take the next one literally.

[Frank Slootweg]

*Instead of* the last echo do:

cat <<-'E@O@F'


...Test


E@O@F

Note the *exact* syntax.
The single quotes around the first E@O@F means that what follows (upto the next E@O@F) is not interpreted, i.e. the double backslash is kept.

The minus before the first E@O@F means that any leading tabs are stripped (I do not know whether you want that or not.

For details, see the description of "<<[-]word" in the "Input/Output" section of the sh-posix(1) manual page ("m...

[Tom Weinstock_1]

Here is the code:

(
echo "From: HP-UX"
echo "To: tweinstock@foleylaw.com"
echo "Subject: A/R Report"
echo "Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii"
echo "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "
echo "MIME-Version: 1.0"
echo ""
echo "

...Test

"
) | sendmail -t

This works fine...it comes over as HTML and looks fantastic, except for the link to a network server. As I said in the first posting, I tried using 4 \'s to get the \\servername to come over correctly, but I only get one \ instead of two. Also, from what I can tell, the \t (for the \tmp folder) appears to be coming over as a tab.

Any ideas?

Thanks for the help guys, I truly app...

[Tom Weinstock_1]

One more thing to note...in my example above, I put \\servername but the actual server name begins with an "f" and from what I can tell, the \f puts in, what appears to be, a carriage return.

Not sure if it's actually a CR or not, but it looks like it when I "view source".

Tom

[Frank Slootweg]

Sigh, time problems again. My response *precedes* yours.

[Tom Weinstock_1]

I got this when I tried to execute the file.

Syntax error at line 14 : `<<' is not matched.

Tom

[Tom Weinstock_1]

I took the ' - ' out of the cat expression and I think we're in business. I need to do some more testing. Thanks so much for your help!!

Tom

[Frank Slootweg]

I am glad that it seems to be working.

As to the error: Note the *exact* syntax. If possible, copy-and-paste it because web-browsers often use silly fonts.

cat <<-'E@O@F'

is

catEOF

Frank "I hate silly fonts!" Slootweg

[Tom Weinstock_1]

Everything is working great now!! Thanks very much for your help!

Me = Happy Camper

Thanks again!

Tom

[Tom Weinstock_1]

I'm baaaaack...

Everything is working great except when I send these e-mails to Outlook 2002 users. Outlook 2002, it seems, automatically disables any scripting in HTML formatted e-mails. (see Microsoft's KB article # 295957.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;295957) I have been researching this for a couple of days and if I am understanding things correctly, Outlook 2002 will allow these scripts to work if the e-mail is sent from an authenticated user. So, my questions are...

First, is this right? If so, has anyone sent messages from their Unix system (using sendmail) that have been digitally signed? and if so, how is this done?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

Tom

[Jordan Bean]

Doesn't this work?

mailx -ms 'A/R Report' tweinstock@foleylaw.com <

Report


EOF

By using forward-slashes with the file protocol, you don't have to worry about escaping back-slashes.