HTML Body in kolab.xml?

[Shawn Walker]

On 11/21/2010 3:36 AM, Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems) wrote:
> On Saturday, November 20, 2010 06:05:45 pm Shawn Walker wrote:
> 
>> Is it possible to add another XML tag to the Kolab spec "htmlbody"? The
>> reason is that Outlook allow the user to style the body of event, tasks,
>> contacts, etc. Currently "body" tag is only for plain text.
>>
>> I think we should also BASE64 encode the HTML text for "htmlbody" to remove
>> any issues with the HTML tag interfering with the XML tag.
>>
>> <htmlbody>base64_encoded</htmlbody>
>>
> 
> I like the feature, but here's a thought, further enhancing the idea;
> 
> The HTML body would not have to be part of the Kolab XML payload, and can just be an attachment. The
> ability for a client to display the HTML body (instead of?) the plaintext body could then be based
> on referrals to a specific attachment, not locking in the XML format itself to HTML content
> specifically. Attachments that (in the future?) could then be displayed inline could include formats
> such as ODF, PDF, GS, ... etcetera. I propose considering something along the lines of
> <formattedbody attachment="$reference" />.

In Outlook, there are three properties for the body of the message, plain text, html and RTF.  We
can ignore the RTF since there will be a html body (let's hope and I have never seen an instance
where there was not a html body if the user created a formatted body).

Having "formattedbody" is fine.  Probably should allow more than one "formattedbody" tags to that
there can be multiple version of the body but that "attachment="$reference"" must be included so
that the client can choose which formatted body it can handle.

The only issue with having multiple formats is if the client doesn't understand the format, but does
update the plain text, then the bodies in the kolab data will get out of sync.

> 
> Thoughts?
> Kind regards,
> Jeroen van Meeuwen
> 
> -- 
> 
> Senior Engineer, Kolab Systems AG
> e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
> t: +316 42 801 403
> w: http://www.kolabsys.com
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> 
> 
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