Re: [xml-dev] What tool can convert the HTML from an Outlook emailmessag

Hi Roger,

The SgmlReader by Chris Lovett -- downloaded from: https://github.com/lovettchris/SgmlReader and built with Visual Studio, gives us a handy command-line tool for tasks like this.

I tried it on the html file provided by you:

sgmlreader mail.html mail.xhtml

The output file: mail.xhtml does contain the xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" namespace declaration. here is the complete output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?><html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<head>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii" />
<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)" />
<style></style></head><body lang="EN-US" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal">Hello, world<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>

Cheers,

Dimitre

On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 10:40 AM Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:

Hi Folks,

At the bottom of this message I show HTML that was produced by an Outlook email message (a “Hello, world” email message). The HTML has some interesting features. For example, it has a comment containing namespace-qualified elements and attributes:



The v namespace prefix is used only in that comment and nowhere else. I have tried a couple tools that convert HTML to XHTML and apparently they don’t look inside the comment because they remove the namespace declaration:

<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"
            xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
            xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
            xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml"
            xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

I want to import the XHTML back into Outlook, but unfortunately after removing namespace declarations the XHTML is not valid as far as Outlook is concerned.

Is there a tool that can convert the HTML generated by Outlook to XHTML, such that the XHTML can be reimported into Outlook?

If no such tool exists, I will create my own tool. Would XSLT be suitable for such a task? /Roger

<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"
            xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
            xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
            xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml"
            xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
            <head>
                        <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type"
                                    CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
                                    <meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)">
                                                <style></style></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Hello, world<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>