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How do I stop the editor parsing my text for hyperlinks?, The automatic creation of links is not what I want and seems impossible to turn off or undo
 
The text editor parses the text of my messages and attempts to turn every apparent URL and email address into a clickable hyperlink. I don't want this to happen, because it is too often not my intent. So I am looking for a way either to stop it from doing this, or at least for a way to to remove all the links in a message after it has been typed. I can't find a way to do either. In fact, I can't find a way to remove even one link after it has been created. I can,  tediously, change the colour and the underlining and the font, but that doesn't make the link go away.
 
Wow, it seems that this is not possible in both HTML editors. There really is no "Remove Hyperlink" command. Even the text editor marks what it thinks are hyperlinks, but that it just for display purposes.

I found one way to remove a hyperlink in both HTML editors: Utilities -> Edit HTML Source, and there manually delete all the stuff that defines the hyperlink, leaving just the text.

EDIT: A way to avoid the automatic formation of hyperlinks: don't press the space bar after the address text. Press it before, move the cursor to the left, type the address, and move the cursor to the right.
Edited: Miloš Radovanović - 20 November 2024 15:00:51
 
I suspect that despite your best efforts, it's possible that your recipient's email client is likely to undo your work and display anything that looks like un URI or an email address as an active link - unless you know for sure that your correspondents force plain text.  
 
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Chris Ramsden wrote:
I suspect that despite your best efforts, it's possible that your recipient's email client is likely to undo your work and display anything that looks like un URI or an email address as an active link - unless you know for sure that your correspondents force plain text.

Good point. I did some tests by writing e-mails to myself. Both plain text and HTML messages, with a URL (www.hello.com) written as text, no link formation (confirmed in message source).

In all combinations of viewers (plain text / HTML) and message formats (plain text / HTML), TB displays the URLs as links. GMail over the browser, same thing.

There's just no escaping the bloody things...

EDIT: And look what the forum software did to the URL above  :D  
Edited: Miloš Radovanović - 20 November 2024 17:17:29
 
I have seen this kind of behavior at https://www.mediamonkey.com/. At least to me it seem to be presented as hyperlink whether it is brackets or not. [I think they use the same "Link" button that we do here]
How can I set the default font size for posts here at TB?
 
Quote
Chris Ramsden wrote:
I suspect that despite your best efforts, it's possible that your recipient's email client is likely to undo your work and display anything that looks like un URI or an email address as an active link - unless you know for sure that your correspondents force plain text.  
I'm sure that you are correct. But what my recipients' email clients do is their business, and they can at least in principle turn it off. Though, admittedly, Microsoft makes that setting so hard to discover that most people never find out how.

I simply think that I am entitled to determine the content of my email messages without overrides from the email client. I take similar objection to the editor correcting my English spelling, but at least I can reverse that.

I think the underlying reason for this is that Ritlabs thinks that html is for sissies, and real power users choose plain text. Why else would The Bat! supply default html templates that, for a 10-line email, specify 4 fonts, 2 typeweights, and 5 colours? ("Ermm, what about the other 5 fonts?")
 
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Paul Keating wrote:
I think the underlying reason for this is that Ritlabs thinks that html is for sissies, and real power users choose plain text. Why else would The Bat! supply default html templates that, for a 10-line email, specify 4 fonts, 2 typeweights, and 5 colours? ("Ermm, what about the other 5 fonts?")

I agree with everything, except this. The devs put in a big effort to implement a new and better HTML editor (in v9 I think), but failed to the extent of being "forced" to bring the old one back, so now we have two.

Why did they fail? On one hand they were probably not up to the challenge, and on the other, the state of HTML (e-mails) is generally a complete mess. In hindsight, they would have probably been better off licensing an existing solution. But that may not have been technically feasible, at least at the time. Who knows, in the future we may get yet another editor based on JavaScript running in CEF.
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