URLs for the form file:// are not active in Mozilla Mail. (See bug 135830.) Therefore, the plaintext HTML scanner should not present file:// texts as a link.

The recognizer is (at least in theory) not specific to Mailnews. If the browser uses the converter (bug 39042) and you open a .txt file with a file:// URL, the link could and should work. There is probably a larger number of URLs which are not allowed (because of security restrictions), but are recognized, because I link all URLs considered valid by Necko. If I wanted to link only those URL which can actually be loaded by clicking in the Mailnews msg, I'd either have to special-case a number of URL schemes, or to find a generic way to discover, if the link is clickable. This may actually be dable with CheckLoadURI(), but I'd need to change the API to get the original doc. Actually, the current behaviour could be of minor usefulness - you can right-click and do "copy link location", then paste into urlbar (middle-click on proxy icon for me). Mike, what do you think? How important do you consider this (and why)? Code: Scheme check (not validity check) is in mozTXTToHTMLConv::ShouldLinkify() <http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/netwerk/streamconv/converters/mozTXTToHTMLConv.cpp#383>

To be clear: *If* we can find a generic way to discover, if a link can be loaded from this doc, and it's not an unreasonable amount of work, I guess this is a good idea.

Ben, I agree with your assessment; I just posted this bug as part of disassembling the mess that was bug 241291. (I *did* set this as a Minor bug.) See also bug 220772.

(In reply to comment #2) > To be clear: *If* we can find a generic way to discover, if a link can be loaded > from this doc checkLoadURI? but I think that shows a message on console if it fails, and that'd be not a good idea here...

*** Bug 260130 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Moving a bunch of mozTXTToHTMLConv bugs into Core / MailNews Backend to live with their bretheren.

sorry for the spam. making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs. filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.