win32com: create email message in windows default app?

[Alex Martelli]

Mark Hahn wrote:


>> But what is "windows default email application" ?
> 
> I don't know, except that windows applications such as outlook and outlook
> express will ask "Outlook is no longer the default email application,
> would
> you like to make it the default?".  So somebody somewhere inside of
> windows thinks there is a default.
> 
> Also, when you click on a mailto: link in a web browser, only one mail
> message comes up from one mail application, so it must be the default
> email
> application.  How do I get to that default email application and tell it
> to open a message for me?

What about "opening" the mailto URL you need with Windows' "start"?  e.g.
    os.system("start mailto:foo at bar.com")
?  Or of course you may use more advanced COM Monicker handling for
the "mailto:etc" monicker -- I'm sure the COM parts of win32all and/or
ctypes let you muck with Monickers as needed (even though the internals
of low-level Monicker API's, as I recall from my Windows days, are as
mucky as the overall functionality is neat, still, if the functionality
of "start" isn't sufficient, low-level Monicker API's will no doubt
give you all that it IS feasible to obtain on Windows for this purpose),

Oh btw,

    os.system('start "mailto:foo at bar.com?subject=what ever"')

if you want to pump the subject into the msg as well as the recipient.


Alex