[VM] VM displaying images

[j***@jrd.org]

Hi folks. Apologies ahead of time if this is a dumb question; I
researched a bit and didn't find anything which looks apropos.

I have a situation where VM sometimes displays inline images, and
sometimes doesn't, and it's not obvious to me why. Is there a good
way to enable debugging of message display processing, so I can get a
handle on the decisions which are being made? Alternatively,
suggestions on where I could start instrumenting the code to dig into
it? I'm reasonably fluent in el, just looking for hints on where to
poke.

I'm running gentoo x86-64
kernel 3.2.2
emacs 23.4
vm 8.1.2
w3m 0.5.3

Thanks in advance...

[Uday Reddy]

Post by j***@jrd.org
I have a situation where VM sometimes displays inline images, and
sometimes doesn't, and it's not obvious to me why. Is there a good
way to enable debugging of message display processing, so I can get a
handle on the decisions which are being made?

The first thing to do would be to read through the VM manual carefully to
understand how the decision is made. There are a number of options settings
that determine the process.

If you download and install the current version of VM, available from
http://launchpad.net/vm, you will get to see the latest version of the
documentation, which would have some clarifications incorporated.

Secondly, whether the images are displayed inline depends on how the message
itself was composed and what the sender of the message intended, i.e., what
its MIME declarations say. (Unfortunately, the senders are not always
knowledgeable about how it is done, and leave the decisions to their mail
clients, which are of variable quality.) In VM 8.2.0b, you can use the
command M-x vm-list-mime-part-structure to view what the MIME structure of
the message is.

Finally, whether the images are displayed inline also depends on what your
installation of Emacs is capable of displaying.

In addition, if you are using emacs-w3m to render html, then you also have
to worry about how its options have been set.

So, there is a lot to take in and check. You will need to consider each
case separately, but it is possible that when you find a fix for one case,
some others get fixed as well.

Cheers,
Uday