[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #43206: Angle brackets around URLs can confuse email clients

[WordPress Trac]

#43206: Angle brackets around URLs can confuse email clients
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 Reporter:  tomdxw        |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect (bug)  |      Status:  closed
 Priority:  normal        |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Mail          |     Version:  4.9.2
 Severity:  normal        |  Resolution:  duplicate
 Keywords:                |     Focuses:
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Changes (by SirLouen):

 * status:  reopened => closed
 * resolution:   => duplicate


Comment:

 Replying to [comment:3 SergeyBiryukov]:
 > Related: #18493, #21095, #23420, #39742.
 >
 > The latest patch on #23578 changes `wp_mail()` to convert URLs in
 brackets to proper links if `wp_mail_content_type` is set to `text/html`,
 I think that would be a good first step.

 This is a two folded problem:

 Replying to [ticket:43206 tomdxw]:
 > As there is no standardised way to make a link clickable in a plain text
 document I think the best solution would be for WordPress to send all mail
 in both `text/plain` and `text/html`.

 On one side, user is suggesting that one solution could be functional
 `multipart/alternative` which would partly do the cut but not entirely.
 This is currently being covered in #15448.

 > However in some email clients, the trailing > is treated as part of the
 link, which also causes users to end up at the wrong URL.

 According to RFC 2396:

 > In practice, URI are delimited in a variety of ways, but usually within
 double-quotes "http://test.com/", angle brackets <http://test.com/>, or
 just using whitespace

 > Using <> angle brackets around each URI is especially recommended as a
 delimiting style for URI that contain whitespace.

 So the fact that some email clients are not correctly recognizing these
 brackets, means that they are not compliant with standards, and we cannot
 do benefit those clients in exchange for harming other clients that are
 doing things right.

 In fact, this goes further: some clients like Mailpit
 ([https://github.com/axllent/mailpit/issues/535 reported upstream]) don't
 respect the spaces between the angle brackets, while others like Apple's
 Mail do.

 For all these reasons, this report is a `close` with `wontfix` candidate,
 but given that the proposed solution with multipart has been already been
 covered and I also believe could be a solution, to add up to the other
 ticket I'm going to mark this as another duplicate for #15448

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/43206#comment:7>
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