How to configure Emacs/VM to decode text/html mails using lynx rather than emacs-w3m?

Question

I recently upgrated to Emacs 23.2.1. I am using VM version 8.1.93a to read my email. I used to change html mail to text via the following line in my vm configuration file:

(add-to-list 'vm-mime-type-converter-alist 
'("text/html" "text/plain" "lynx -force_html -dump -stdin"))

but under emacs 23 I get the following error message:

Inline text/html by emacs-w3m display failed: 
(error "Emacs-w3m of this version does not support 
Emacs 23; try the development version")

Searching a bit in Emacs documentation, I thought I had found a solution, by the way of

(load-library "mm-decode")
(setq mm-text-html-renderer "lynx")

But it seems that vm-8 totally ignores both vm-mime-type-converter-alist (which is still documented) and mm-text-html-renderer (which is documented, was set to w3m till I set it to lynx). Did I miss something or is vm messed up and I should choose another emacs mail reader?

Answer 1

I found the answer via some more googling, in the release description of vm-8.1 (http://savannah.c3sl.ufpr.br/viewmail/NEWS)

    text/html handling controlled by a new variable
    `vm-mime-text/html-handler' which is set to 'auto-select by
    default.  It causes VM to locate the best library among
    emacs-w3m, external w3m, w3 and lynx to display html
    internally.  (This replaces the earlier variable
    `vm-mime-use-w3-for-text/html'.)

Note that this variable was not set to "auto-select" but to "emacs--w3m" by default. Adding the following to my vm configuration did the trick for me: (setq vm-mime-text/html-handler "lynx") And the yanking of html emails work (contrarily to what happened to me with w3m-emacs)

Answer 2

Try (setq vm-mime-renderer-for-text/html 'lynx). It had worked for someone using vm 8.0 sometime back, as seen here.