Here is my mailcap file:
text/html; elvis %s
text/enriched; richtext %s
text/*; less %s
image/gif; pictview %s
image/jpeg; pictview %s
image/*; pictview %s
The %s is replaced by yarn and metamail with a temporary file containing
the part of the message that is a html doc, gif image, etc. You can see
that I use pictview to see images, the text viewer called ``less'' to
view plain text, and the dos editor, elvis, to view html.
I have found elvis to be better than the other free dos viewers (e.g.,
viewhtml) at displaying text with html tags in a formatted, color coded,
readable manner. Elvis does not directly display pictures, but can be
configured to call a viewer like pictview to show pictures within
html if you double click on its ``picture'' icons.
Another alternative is to create a batch file that uses, for instance,
Bruce Gutherie's superb program, htmstrip, which removes html tags from
a file, formats the text the way the tags intended and puts the results
in another file:
_____________BEGIN showhtml.bat----------------
htmstrip [options] %1 > \tmp\tmpfile
more \tmp\tmpfile
del \tmp\tmpfile
-------------END showhtml.bat--------------------
There are other dos programs that strip html tags from text.
Finally, if you want to see html in all its potential glory, you
can specify a batchfile in your mailcap file that starts windows
and runs one of the monster browsers on your message part -- such
as netscape or internet explorer.