Why can I not choose HTML format?

I've gotten really invovled with drupal over the past week or so,
and i've noticed that the biggest problem with drupal is the lack of documentation in the readme.

This module was luckily easy to work out... just skimming through the documentation inside the .module file,
it tells you that you need the mime mail module

just tested, and it works.

-bruce

Why was this closed?
The 'feature' is not documented anywhere. I just upgrade from 4.7, and our HTML newsletter which used to work no longer sends as HTML.
It's a good thing that I thought about including closed issue in my search.

There is no mention of the new dependency in README.txt.

In the code, there is the following mention, but it doesn't say WHICH extra module is necessary:

 * Mail engine to send newsletter. If you want to send HTML newsletters you need
 * to plug in an extra module

... and which user would know how to browse the code to find out how to fix their problem.

And much worse: simplenews doesn't implement hook_help() at all, so no help message is displayed anywhere.
hook_help() would be the ideal place to place a warning about the module dependency, which would be displayed when visiting the settings page IF the module is not enabled: "If you want to send HTML newsletters, you need to install the Mime Mail module (+link)".

The module in question is this one: http://drupal.org/project/mimemail
there is not event a link from the project home page (http://drupal.org/project/simplenews), a warning or dependency notice.

Anyway, I have just installed the module and enabled it. I can now select HTML, but the test newsletter still sends as plain text...
Is there a special formatting to adopt?

This cryptic note in the mimemail README.txt:

This module creates a user preference for receiving plaintext-only
messages. This preference will be honored by all calls to mimemail()

does not seem to make reference to Drupal user preference setting, but to the receiver's mail client preference setting. Mine was set to plain text, hence I didn't see the html formatting at first.
In short, all is now well with our newsletter... but things definitely need a bit more documentation.

Since this issue is assigned to brucealdridge, I'll let him work out a patch ;)

http://drupal.org/node/141395

I saw the duplicate earlier.
But until the issue is solved, keep this one open for the sake of the simplenews.module users: the title is much easier to search for and find.

The title of the other issue is more accurate... but the users won't know that's it's related to their problem.

The maintainers can ignore this issue: we know it's a duplicate. Everybody: please post follows ups (patches, etc.) in the other issue.

Only set this 'fixed' (or 'duplicate') when the other one is fixed.

Various help and documentation improvements carried out in project page, readme.txt, hook_help and configuration and customization handbook. Issue http://drupal.org/node/141395 is now fixed.