email address mailto links

crankygeologist

For version 1.1.11 (126), email addresses become active links, but currently don't behave like "mailto" links. If I click on "someone@fastmail.com," Safari opens and I'm taken to the "fastmail.com" domain/home page. In order to launch Mail.app with the email address field filled in, I have to prepend email addresses with "mailto:" Could this be fixed in a future version? Thanks.

Basil

It looks like it is already fixed in a "future" version: In version 1.2.5, which is the most recent version from the Cutting Edge update channel, clicking on an email address behaves as if it was a "mailto:" link (i.e., a new email is opened in Mail.app).

crankygeologist

Thanks, Basil. That sounds promising, but I just upgraded to 1.2.5 (133) and clicking on an email address still does not behave as if it was a "mailto:" link.

ctietze

Can you test clicking on different parts of the link? I wonder if the domain after the @ is treated as a web link overwriting the existing email link at that location. I cannot reproduce the link opening in Safari at all at the moment. Could you share/send via email a test document?

Basil

Turns out, the top level domain of the email address determines whether it is handled properly or not:

For instance:

• someone@fastmail.ca opens in Mail.app
• someone@fastmail.com opens in Safari

.org, .net, .mil also open in Safari, whereas .it, .jp, .weird open in Mail.app.
(using The Archive 1.2.5 (133) on macOS 10.14.5)

Will

I can report that in my system, (using The Archive 1.2.5 (133) on macOS 10.14.4) the same behavior as @Basil with email links. Only I use Chrome for my browser instead of Safari and Gmail instead of Mail.app. This appears to be broken in The Archive as other apps (including the mac terminal) behave as expected and open all email links in mail app rather than the browser.

Weirdly, any other 2 or 3 letters (legal or not) used in the domain spot launch Gmail as expected except .com, .org, .net, and .mil.

ctietze

This is especially awkward since I rely on the macOS link detection stuff I'll investigate! Thanks for the great work uncovering this!

Basil

It seems that any address that ends with one of the original top level domains (com, edu, gov, mil, org, & net) is handled improperly, and all other top level domain (legal or not, as Will already said) is handled properly. So the former might be somehow hardcoded into the address/url parser, and that is somehow causing this issue. Would love to hear the details of this bug.

Also, just for the record: I don't know why I wrote that the first type of addresses open in Safari on my Mac, when in fact my default browser is Vivaldi. As someone who typically has between 50 and 90 tabs open in his browser, I could not handle the madness that is most other browsers with their mess of tiny horizontal tabs at the top. With Vivaldi, I can have my tabs neatly displayed on the left with much of their titles visible, so that I can actually tell apart those 10 tabs from the same website that all have the same favicon.

crankygeologist

More info...if I highlight the full email address text, click on "The Archive" in the menu bar, choose "Services," and under "Messaging" choose "New Email To Address" Mail.app opens as expected, regardless of the top level domain. I guess this means that at some level, the OS knows the text is an email address.

Will

@crankygeologist said:
More info...if I highlight the full email address text, click on "The Archive" in the menu bar, choose "Services," and under "Messaging" choose "New Email To Address" Mail.app opens as expected, regardless of the top level domain. I guess this means that at some level, the OS knows the text is an email address.

Yes, this works. But only with Mail.app and not my default email client Gmail. This service seems hardcoded to use macs on email client, not third parties. Seems no way to switch it?

crankygeologist

@Will said:

@crankygeologist said:
More info...if I highlight the full email address text, click on "The Archive" in the menu bar, choose "Services," and under "Messaging" choose "New Email To Address" Mail.app opens as expected, regardless of the top level domain. I guess this means that at some level, the OS knows the text is an email address.

Yes, this works. But only with Mail.app and not my default email client Gmail. This service seems hardcoded to use macs on email client, not third parties. Seems no way to switch it?

I think you're right, Will. You would have to use something like Mailplane and set it to be the default mail client for the OS.

crankygeologist

Any progress on this issue? The problem is still present in 1.4.0 (141). Thanks!

ctietze

Not yet. Will tackle this further down the roadmap when I refine the whole Markdown highlighter. (This is, surprisingly, not a trivial issue.)