It's not such a big issue, no, but it's something MacBU is thinking about.
Here's where we are:
Entourage's text editor is based upon the same WASTE text engine used
previously in Outlook Express Mac and in many other Mac applications, with a
special Unicode implementation that lets you type and send in any language
or alphabet. It has various rich text (styled text) features such as bold,
color, etc. but is not a full-featured HTML editor, which WASTE can't
handle. It has absolutely nothing to do with Outlook Windows, nor does
Entourage itself, aside from the corporation that makes it. (The reasons for
that have little or nothing to do with the text engine but rather that
Outlook uses an implementation of a complicated and almost deprecated mail
protocol called MAPI, which is on its way out and would have been a big
mistake to use in a new app on the Mac. So Entourage was created
independently for the Mac.)
As Entourage has evolved, more and more graphics features have been added.
You can now insert pictures, movies, sounds inline, you can add background
pictures, etc. The two things you can't do are create tables and links to
image files on a server.
In earlier versions of Entourage, _viewing_ such "complex HTML" messages
(i.e. containing tables and image web links) were simply passed on to the
HTML rendering engine in Internet Explorer, which can do such things (but
not create HTML source pages). Very late in the Office 2004 development
cycle, Apple created Safari. made it the default browser, and Microsoft
decided therefore not to get in the way, and ended development of IE Mac. So
they included a version of the IE (actually what would have been in the next
IE release) HTML engine (called "Tasman"). It still doesn't crate complex
HTML - it just renders (views) it. Had these events happened earlier, who
knows what there might have been time for.
In Office 2004, they introduced the capability of creating fully featured
"complex HTML" pages by using the new File/Send to Mail Recipient (as HTML)
in Word 2004. Try it. It converts any Word document, including pages with
tables, to HTML and transfers it to Entourage for you to add the recipients.
Naturally you can't edit the HTML page further in Entourage. That doesn't
help with forwarding existing mail, so they also added "Forward As
Attachment". As I already said last time, the "attachment" is seen inline by
recipients, so there is no loss of function or features. That means that you
can now create new HTML messages in Word, and forward existing HTML messages
via "Forward As Attachment". I fail to see why you find it such a great
impediment that you can't do it _exactly the same way you did in Outlook_,
but have to do it a different way. So what? You're using a different app on
a different platform - learn the way to do it here. There's no law that says
it has to be done the same way here. (Or check out Netscape or a Mozilla.)
That said, it's not impossible that in a later release Entourage will
suddenly sprout a fully-fledged HTML editor of its own. I'd be pleased
because hopefully it would then be scriptable - the current styled text
features and graphics insertions are totally unscriptable. In the meantime,
the Send as HTML feature in Word, Forward as Attachment, and mine and Rob
Buckley's Send Complex HTML scripts do a pretty good job of covering the
bases.
--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <
http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
