Revmail problems on Windows 8

[Richard Gaskin]

David V Glasgow wrote:

 > I had carefully tested all the complex stuff, but hadn’t bothered
 > with this because it was a single line of script:
 >
 > revMail “Cluster.Buster@*************.nhs.uk",,"Cluster Buster - help
 > I'm stuck"
 >
 > It works fine in the dev environment, and on Mac standalones.  On
 > Windows 8 it does nothing.
 >
 > Just in case it was an inclusions thing, I switched to automatic
 > inclusions, but this made no difference.
 >
 > Is there any possibility it is a security setting on the network?  I
 > can talk to the NHS Trust IT folks next week, but I am a bear of
 > little brain when it comes to Win networks, and I could do with a few
 > sensible pointers if this is a possibility.
 >
 > I noticed that just about 2 years ago Mark Stuart reported that
 > Revmail didn’t then work on Windows 8.  That couldn’t still be an
 > issue, could it?
 >
 > Finally, are there any pointers to a simple alternative approach to
 > Revmail?  (bearing in mind I have no control and very little access
 > to any aspects of the platform or network)

revMail is just a wrapper for the "mailto:" protocol designation. All it 
does is open a mail with the various specified fields already filled in 
(subject, to, body, etc.).

As such, no networking is involved, since it's up to the email client to 
actually send the message.

Well designed modern OSes ship with default apps assigned to handle 
"http:", "mailto:", and often "ftp:" along with others.   On Windows 
this is done through registry setting.

I don't have Win 8.0 but I just tested "mailto:" on Win 8.1 and it does 
indeed open the default email client.

Perhaps revMail is working harder than it needs to, maybe predating 
"launch url" and attempting to do extra work that "launch url" can 
handle well for it today.  If so it may be a bug, but I haven't looked 
into the revMail code to see what it's up to.

One simple workaround is to just use "mailto:" directly with "launch 
url:", e.g.:

    put "someaddy at somedomain.com" into tAddress
    put "Some Subject Line" into tSubject
    put "This is the body of the email" into tBody
    put "mailto:"& tAddress &"?subject="& tSubject &"&body="& tBody \
        into tURL
   launch url tURL

If that doesn't work it may be that the machine you're testing on has 
had its default email application assignment mucked up, either by one of 
the many known brittle aspects of the Windows registry or perhaps 
intentionally by admins who set up the system (though given how popular 
"mailto:" is on Web pages that wouldn't have been a smart thing for an 
admin to do).

What is the value of "the result" immediately after attempting "revMail"?


This article may be helpful:
<http://blogs.technet.com/b/mrmlcgn/archive/2013/02/26/windows-8-associate-a-file-type-or-protocol-with-a-specific-app-using-a-gpo-e-g-default-mail-client-for-mailto-protocol.aspx>

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com