RTF Mails are rendered differently

[Faelean]

I think I've figured out what is happening so this is more of a "is there a workaround" issue.

One of our use cases is converting an email to HTML (via the getHTMLText function on the Email class) and display it in a browser. With the latest update of rtf-to-html the HTML is now wrapped with a <pre style="white-space:pre-wrap">. While this does preserve line breaks, it also adds the default browser styles for pre tags:

     display: block;
     font-family: monospace;
     white-space: pre;
     margin: 1em 0;

Especially the font-family: monospace; completely changes how the mail is displayed since it overrides the font from the one we provide with whatever monospace font is available on the system.
I also can't just add a style for the pre tag since (as far I've seen) when using the getHTMLText function I have no way of knowing if the original mail is an RTF or a HTML mail. Adding this style would possibly change the font of a pre tag inside an HTML mail, where a monospace font is wanted. My current idea is looking for <pre style="white-space:pre-wrap"> and replace it with a span. Do you have any input on how to make this work?

[bbottema]

Thanks for the analysis. I agree this is a regression in the rendered output in the upstream rtf-to-html library, rather than something users should have to work around in Simple Java Mail.

I am working on a patch in the RTF conversion chain now. The goal is to keep preserving the Outlook plain-text layout, but stop leaking browser <pre> defaults like monospace font and margins into Email#getHTMLText() output.

[bbottema]

Patch update: this was fixed in the upstream RTF conversion chain rather than exposing low-level conversion controls in Simple Java Mail.

• rtf-to-html 2.0.2 now emits <div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> for Outlook plain-text RTF (\fromtext) instead of <pre style="white-space:pre-wrap">.
• outlook-message-parser 1.16.1 consumes that fix.
• Simple Java Mail has a regression test against Email#getHTMLText() and is being updated to consume outlook-message-parser 1.16.1 for the next patch release.

[bbottema]

Released in v9.0.3 and available in Maven Central:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.simplejavamail</groupId>
    <artifactId>simple-java-mail</artifactId>
    <version>9.0.3</version>
</dependency>

This pulls in outlook-message-parser 1.16.1 and rtf-to-html 2.0.2. Outlook plain-text RTF conversion still preserves line breaks, but Email#getHTMLText() now uses <div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> instead of <pre style="white-space:pre-wrap">, so browser-default monospace font and margins no longer leak into rendered output.