Subject line

ruby-talk
41

That's an interesting choice of words since your entire argument for the addition is based on your specific situation. As you say, I am not you.

James Edward Gray II

···

On Sep 3, 2007, at 1:38 PM, Chad Perrin wrote:

On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 03:27:28AM +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:

On Sep 3, 2007, at 1:16 PM, Chad Perrin wrote:

Thoughts:

Not everyone filters ruby-talk into its own "folder" in a mail user
agent. Some of us prefer to have all incoming email appear in the
same
inbox list, but want to be able to filter by eye.

That's why I have my MUA color Ruby-Talk posts red. They stand out
just fine.

That's nice for you. Others here are not you.

42

Chad Perrin wrote:

···

On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 03:19:57AM +0900, Stefan Rusterholz wrote:

> agent. Some of us prefer to have all incoming email appear in the same
> inbox list, but want to be able to filter by eye.
>
> Considering even the typical CLI-only terminal has an 80-character
> width,
> I don't see how six characters is such a deal-breaker. There's
> something
> wrong if people are sending 70+ character subject lines, anyway.

And your client of choice doesn't support rewriting the subject as a
filter?

. . . and you wouldn't complain if all my responses contained [RUBY] in
the subject line?

1 out of... how many are subscribed here?
I think I *could* live with it. Even though it would be incredibly hard
:wink:

Regards
Stefan
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

43

Joel VanderWerf wrote:

James Edward Gray II wrote:

Do you also show the sender and the date received on that line? I think you'll find that most MUA setups give far less than 80 subject characters by default. Mine sure does, and it's not a terminal application.

Yup. In my thunderbird setup, with columns for subject, sender, date, size, and some flags, I see only about 45-50 characters of subject. I'd lose 12 them to "[RUBY-TALK] ".... I was very glad to see the old "[ruby-talk:NNNNN]" go away a few years ago.

The message ID was nice for references, though. I know it's still there in the headers, but thunderbird has no option (AFAIK) to display just that _one_ additional header field.

If you're talking about Thunderbird pressing 'L' (either directly or due to some extension that I may have installed) does expand the message list to cover the full window (hiding the folders panes) giving a lot of extra space for your messages and the 12 columns to be visible - and with wide screens, the situation gets better still :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Mohit.
9/4/2007 | 11:19 AM.

44

I vote against, basically because I believe the issue can be solved
differently (and people are actually doing it). Note that the OP is
using a gmail account which *has* nice filtering capabilities (which I
use as well).

Plus, there is a certain chance that the header mangling conflicts
with various other forums that are interconnected with this mailing
list (notably comp.lang.ruby and the ruby forum). For these forums a
changed subject would be redundant because in a way they *are*
filtered already. So we would either have to live with those
redundancies or make gateways smarter to remove that tag again. I
don't feel it's worth the effort.

Kind regards

robert

45

Sorting by the To: line means that all the sorting you get is going to be
two blocks of stuff -- mailing list stuff and other stuff. That's not
the most ideal sorting choice for most people.

···

On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 08:59:09PM +0900, John Joyce wrote:

Respectfully, no, unless it's very short. I suggest sort by the To:
line. If that is trouble, then your mail client needs to change, any
mailing list like this generates enough mail, that you need either a
dedicated e-mail account for the list and/or a mail client capable of
simple sorting rules.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
McCloctnick the Lucid: "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your
time waving your hands and hopping when a rock or a club will do."

46

All that searching shouldn't really be necessary, as long as you keep
enough quoted text to provide context -- unless someone suffers from some
kind of memory-related disability, of course.

···

On Wed, Sep 05, 2007 at 08:12:40AM +0900, Bertram Scharpf wrote:

Anyway, sometimes you have to do weird things. A customer
complained because I always remove the most of the quoted
and pre-quoted text. So he has to search his whole mailbox
for all the previous mails it refers to. He obiously never
heard anything of neither mail filtering nor does his mail
client feature threaded views. It doesn't even send
In-Reply-To headers.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Ben Franklin: "As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others
we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of
ours, and this we should do freely and generously."

47

Chad Perrin wrote:

Any time you tell someone to completely change the tools (s)he uses,
you're essentially telling him/her that his/her preferences don't matter.
That's why.

Ah, but this happens in the corporate world all the time. Because half
of any professional job (or more) is inter-personal communication, not
all of everyone's preferences can matter.

But the good side of that is that sometimes the only way to get
something done in a finite time is to bring in a new tool.

48

Any time you tell someone to completely change the tools (s)he uses,
you're essentially telling him/her that his/her preferences don't matter.
That's why.

What if they don't? I suppose MUAs which cannot handle this stuff
automatically are
pretty rare breed nowadays. There's is nothing wrong with using them,
but it is wrong
to force something needed because of shortcomings (ok, it's not a
shortcoming, it's
"feature") of your preferred MUA on everyone else.

Gmail can handle headers without the need to spam subject lines, so can
Mail on OS X, Thunderbird, and I am sure plenty of other mainstream MUAs.
If someone loves his MUA he will have to love its deficiencies to, that's what
love is about, isn't it?

BTW, changing tools from time to time can be a very good idea. Especially if the
change is for the more capable tool. There may be some productivity
loss at first
(but not in MUAs case, I must say), but you are better off in a long run.

My preference is *not to have* redundant marking in the subject line.
And I prefer not to have fixes that fix stuff for 10% and breaks it for the 90%.

Do my preferences matter?

My vote: "nay".

Regards,
Rimantas

···

--
http://rimantas.com/

49

No. First of all, that assumes I had foreknowledge that you had
already tried the google-groups interface. Have you? Secondly telling
you that a different tool moots an issue you're having, has nothing to
do with discounting your preferences. Lastly, preferences change.
That's what happened to me. While, I still miss some things about my
KMail client, the benefits of the web interface out-weight the loss.

So I'm not dissing you. I'm just offering up an possible alternative.

You seem to be a bit upset because so many people have disagreed with
you. Yes? I know that feeling. Often times however I eventually
discover there is a fair reason for it. I wouldn't be surprised if
your MUA has a means of doing what you want in a different way --you
just haven't discovered it yet. (Hmmm.. maybe I missed it... What MUA
was it, btw?)

T.

···

On Sep 4, 4:56 pm, Chad Perrin <per...@apotheon.com> wrote:

On Wed, Sep 05, 2007 at 08:54:22AM +0900, Trans wrote:

> On Sep 4, 3:47 pm, Chad Perrin <per...@apotheon.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 04:01:56AM +0900, Trans wrote:

> > > On Sep 2, 3:48 pm, "Devi Web Development" <devi.webmas...@gmail.com> > > > > wrote:
> > > > I don't know who would make this sort of decision, but could we put
> > > > [RubyTalk] or [Ruby] or something at the beginning of all messages? It's a
> > > > fairly common practice on listserves.

> > > Why not save yourself all that grief and use

> > > http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-talk-google?hl=en

> > Maybe because some of us *like* our MUAs. That was a fairly insensitive,
> > even offensive, answer. I hope you only meant that as a joke.

> Why would you ever take offense to such a statement? Dude, I think
> maybe you're a little too close to your MUA.

Any time you tell someone to completely change the tools (s)he uses,
you're essentially telling him/her that his/her preferences don't matter.
That's why.

50

forgottenwizard wrote:

Just a quick question; Why not add in the X-ML-Name (it was refered to
earlier in this thread) to the header? It may not be a fix-all, but
wouldn't that come close enough for what some people want to see within
the subject line?

These are already in the headers that are sent from the ruby-talk listserv:

X-ML-Name: ruby-talk
X-Mail-Count: 268195

So, it's there, if you want to use it.

···

--
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407

51

I hadn't thought of that. It's a very good point.

Okay, let's stick with advocating for something like [RUBY-TALK] or
[RUBY] -- or even [RT] -- in the subject line.

If someone complains about four characters, I may have to have a good
laugh before I can respond.

···

On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 03:35:50AM +0900, Bill Kelly wrote:

From: "James Edward Gray II" <james@grayproductions.net>
>
>On Sep 3, 2007, at 1:12 PM, Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>>In other words, I'm also in favor of adding something like [RUBY-
>>TALK] to
>>the subject line on the mailing list.
>
>I'm pretty sure that's not what Matz was talking about. The messages
>use to contain an id number in the header. This makes it easy to
>reference old posts.
>
>I'm fine with the old ids, but I seriously hope we never add
>something like [RUBY-TALK]. That pushes the subject to the right,
>hiding valuable information and it's not needed in filtering, as many
>have pointed out. That makes it a lose, lose change in my book.

D'oh! :slight_smile:

While I wouldn't mind a [RUBY-TALK] prefix, the old id numbers
in the subject, while convenient, thwarted my ability to
sort-by-subject. (Note: The message id is still contained in
the header. I presume you were referring to the one in the
subject specifically.)

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Kent Beck: "I always knew that one day Smalltalk would replace Java. I
just didn't know it would be called Ruby."

52

Hi,

At Tue, 4 Sep 2007 03:45:48 +0900,
Joel VanderWerf wrote in [ruby-talk:267393]:

If you're using konqueror, you can set it up (or was it a default?) so
that typing "ruby-talk:267381" in the location bar opens that page. Some
people got in the habit of using that notation to reference ruby-talk
posts, but it doesn't seem to be used much any more.

You can see tons of them in the ChangeLog file.

···

--
Nobu Nakada

53

I vote against. Those with the firehose of ruby-talk gushing into their
singular inbox is probably an e-mail masochist and enjoys it :slight_smile: That said,
whatever the majority decides, although this all rather sounds like change
for change's sake.

Cheers,
Peter Cooper
http://www.rubyinside.com/

54

I vote against, basically because I believe the issue can be solved
differently (and people are actually doing it). Note that the OP is
using a gmail account which *has* nice filtering capabilities (which I
use as well).

The issue is being worked around in many cases by people who would find
an added identifier far more convenient. In some cases, that work-around
involves spending more time on emails. In others (such as in my case),
it involves using settings that replace the originator's email address in
the inbox display with the list's email address, which unfortunately
means I'm making a decision between two pieces of information I'd like to
have available to me *before* I open the email -- not ideal, but better
than nothing.

In other words, the issue isn't being "solved" in all cases. It's just
being mitigated for many of us, and often requires handling this mailing
list differently from other lists. If there's a credible argument for
keeping things as they are, that's fine -- but please don't just dismiss
the inconvenience suffered by others as "solved" because we've managed to
live with it so far.

Plus, there is a certain chance that the header mangling conflicts
with various other forums that are interconnected with this mailing
list (notably comp.lang.ruby and the ruby forum). For these forums a
changed subject would be redundant because in a way they *are*
filtered already. So we would either have to live with those
redundancies or make gateways smarter to remove that tag again. I
don't feel it's worth the effort.

Unless someone can confirm that there's any problem at all with subject
line editing by the list software, with regard to the forum and newsgroup
gateways, I'm not inclined to consider that much of a valid excuse for
summary rejection of the idea. If someone can provide information to the
effect that your hypothesized problem is actually relevant, however, I'll
definitely take that into account. Your mileage may vary.

···

On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 09:24:57PM +0900, Robert Klemme wrote:

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Paul Graham: "Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to
build programs out of the wrong concepts."

55

Incorrect. My reasoning is not for my specific situation. My reasoning
relates to the fact that there are *many* situations being affected, and
the fact that people like you are essentially of the opinion that some of
us can go screw ourselves because our situations are not yours.

I didn't say what I did because I figure you can go screw yourself if
your situation is different from mine. I said it because your very
individual solution to the problem is not *everyone's* choice, and
shouldn't have to be. The fact you have a solution that works for you is
not a blanket justification for everyone else either liking it or lumping
it.

···

On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 03:54:42AM +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:

On Sep 3, 2007, at 1:38 PM, Chad Perrin wrote:

>On Tue, Sep 04, 2007 at 03:27:28AM +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:
>>On Sep 3, 2007, at 1:16 PM, Chad Perrin wrote:
>>>
>>>Thoughts:
>>>
>>>Not everyone filters ruby-talk into its own "folder" in a mail user
>>>agent. Some of us prefer to have all incoming email appear in the
>>>same
>>>inbox list, but want to be able to filter by eye.
>>
>>That's why I have my MUA color Ruby-Talk posts red. They stand out
>>just fine.
>
>That's nice for you. Others here are not you.

That's an interesting choice of words since your entire argument for
the addition is based on your specific situation. As you say, I am
not you.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
John Kenneth Galbraith: "If all else fails, immortality can always be
assured through spectacular error."

56

I'm fine with the old ids, but I seriously hope we never add something like [RUBY-TALK]. That pushes the subject to the right, hiding valuable information and it's not needed in filtering, as many have pointed out. That makes it a lose, lose change in my book.

D'oh! :slight_smile:

While I wouldn't mind a [RUBY-TALK] prefix, the old id numbers
in the subject, while convenient, thwarted my ability to sort-by-subject. (Note: The message id is still contained in
the header. I presume you were referring to the one in the
subject specifically.)

BTW, to clarify: I wouldn't want to hold back progress just
because my MUA sucks. If enough people find the message-count-
in-the-subject useful, i'd concede the sort-by-subject breakage
is my problem for using an MUA that can't do proper threading.
(Something I *could* change.)

On a related note, was wondering if it would work to append the
message-count ID to the _end_ of the subject? Or would that get
problematic on all the Re:'s ? (I guess this also comes back to
information that might need to be stripped between the usenet
and forums gateways, so.....)

Regards,

Bill

···

From: "Bill Kelly" <billk@cts.com>

57

Robert Klemme:

I vote against, basically because I believe the issue can
be solved differently (and people are actually doing it).

I vote against, as (a) I believe mailing list traffic should be either
sorted out based on the *proper* headers (my ~/.procmailrc snippet
below), (b) subject space is precious to me and (c) I find mass-tagged
subjects way less readable.

(I actually use mutt-ng and gmane.comp.lang.ruby.general to read/write
ruby-talk and, in general, Gmane wherever I can, but that’s a bit beside
the point.)

Note that the OP is using a gmail account which *has*
nice filtering capabilities (which I use as well).

Note: Having a @gmail.com address does not
mean one is using their webmail solution.

:0
* ^Delivered-To: mailing list \/[a-z0-9_+-]+
lists/$MATCH/

:0
* ^List-Id: .*<\/[a-z0-9_+-]+
lists/$MATCH/

:0
* ^List-Id: \/[a-z0-9_+-]+
lists/$MATCH/

:0
* ^To: Multiple recipients of list <\/[a-zA-Z0-9_+-]+
lists/$MATCH/

-- Shot

···

--
Mr Wakefield is not and never has been a member of the Communist
Party. The error is regretted. -- Daily Telegraph (Australia)

58

I didn't realize ruby-talk was a corporation. Thanks for clearing that
up.

Last I checked, the list maintainer wasn't paying me for participation
(and I'd probably be fired anyway if he was).

···

On Wed, Sep 05, 2007 at 09:28:44AM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Chad Perrin wrote:
> Any time you tell someone to completely change the tools (s)he uses,
> you're essentially telling him/her that his/her preferences don't matter.
> That's why.
>
Ah, but this happens in the corporate world all the time. Because half
of any professional job (or more) is inter-personal communication, not
all of everyone's preferences can matter.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
John W. Russell: "People point. Sometimes that's just easier. They also use
words. Sometimes that's just easier. For the same reasons that pointing has
not made words obsolete, there will always be command lines."

59

> Any time you tell someone to completely change the tools (s)he uses,
> you're essentially telling him/her that his/her preferences don't matter.
> That's why.

What if they don't? I suppose MUAs which cannot handle this stuff
automatically are
pretty rare breed nowadays. There's is nothing wrong with using them,
but it is wrong
to force something needed because of shortcomings (ok, it's not a
shortcoming, it's
"feature") of your preferred MUA on everyone else.

Um . . . it wasn't suggested that we should try to accomodate the
majority of MUAs, which probably all have certain general classes of
features. Instead, it was suggested that everyone use a *specific* MUA
to avoid "grief", if I recall the phrasing correctly. Regardless, I for
one actually use an MUA that has excellent threading and sorting
capabilities, on a platform that allows me to do additional sorting and
munging using external tools (mutt on FreeBSD), so that obviously isn't
the reason I tend to lean toward wanting a visual marker for this list.

My reason is that I want ruby-talk traffic in my main inbox, and I want
to sort by thread, but I want to be able to discern ruby-talk (and other
list traffic) at a glance. One of the big reasons for this is to be able
to more quickly ascertain whether a particular message is spam that has
managed to slip through or a badly titled list message -- but that's only
one reason.

You're apparently assuming that everyone who has different preferences
from you is:

  1. a luddite with an underfeatured MUA

  2. stubbornly unwilling to sort the "right" way

  3. trying to make up for personal shortcomings by changing the way the
  list is managed

. . . which is kind of a shitty attitude about your fellow list members.

Gmail can handle headers without the need to spam subject lines, so can
Mail on OS X, Thunderbird, and I am sure plenty of other mainstream MUAs.
If someone loves his MUA he will have to love its deficiencies to, that's what
love is about, isn't it?

So can mutt, which I'm using. My preference for visible list markers has
nothing to do with that, and I don't know where you got the idea that
anyone that wants to be able to identify the source of a given message at
a glance without giving up other identifying information must be using
the mail command and sed as his MUA.

BTW, changing tools from time to time can be a very good idea. Especially if the
change is for the more capable tool. There may be some productivity
loss at first
(but not in MUAs case, I must say), but you are better off in a long run.

"Change is good, so use what I do." That's not very helpful.

My preference is *not to have* redundant marking in the subject line.
And I prefer not to have fixes that fix stuff for 10% and breaks it for the 90%.

You're overstating the case.

Do my preferences matter?

Sure. So does your piss-poor attitude about the preferences of others.

···

On Wed, Sep 05, 2007 at 10:12:53AM +0900, Rimantas Liubertas wrote:

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Amazon.com interview candidate: "When C++ is your hammer, everything starts
to look like your thumb."

60

>
> Any time you tell someone to completely change the tools (s)he uses,
> you're essentially telling him/her that his/her preferences don't matter.
> That's why.

No. First of all, that assumes I had foreknowledge that you had
already tried the google-groups interface. Have you? Secondly telling
you that a different tool moots an issue you're having, has nothing to
do with discounting your preferences. Lastly, preferences change.
That's what happened to me. While, I still miss some things about my
KMail client, the benefits of the web interface out-weight the loss.

You've got that backwards. Your statement assumes that others *haven't*
tried it, and furthermore assumes that they can and *must* try it to be
one of the cool kids like you.

I find that the dubious benefits of a web interface are almost totally
eclipsed by the benefits of an interface over which I have far greater
control, especially since the benefits you seem to want me to "enjoy" are
benefits I already *do* enjoy, unrelated to the reasons I actually would
prefer a visible marker in my inbox view indicating the list source of
messages.

So I'm not dissing you. I'm just offering up an possible alternative.

The suggestion was poorly presented, and carried a mildly insulting tone
across to at least this reader. You may not have intended offense, but
if that's the case, you've failed to express yourself clearly.

You seem to be a bit upset because so many people have disagreed with
you. Yes? I know that feeling. Often times however I eventually
discover there is a fair reason for it. I wouldn't be surprised if
your MUA has a means of doing what you want in a different way --you
just haven't discovered it yet. (Hmmm.. maybe I missed it... What MUA
was it, btw?)

No. I'm not upset because people disagreed. Disagree all you like.
What bothers me is the "everyone who disagrees with me is a luddite, an
obstinate fool, or a bastard" attitude that seems to prevail.

The combination of my MUA and my OS environment provides at least two
opportunities for doing what I want:

  1. I can use the list-subscribe capability of mutt to identify the
  list. Doing this, unfortunately, obscures the original source of the
  message so that I can't tell who sent it to the list until I open it.
  I'm using this now -- but the jury's still out on whether that's an
  improvement, since it interferes with my ability to associate names
  with personalities easily when I'm participating in mailing list
  activity.

  2. I can munge the subject line before it hits my inbox using tools
  available to me as a FreeBSD user -- tools including Ruby, procmail,
  Perl, and other options. This would suit *me* perfectly, but because I
  tend to be more courteous than that, I won't take that approach. I'm
  sure you'd all love to see every message I send to the list suddenly
  start appearing with [Rb] at the beginning of the subject line. Also,
  the fact I can do this doesn't address the preferences of others who
  may be using more crippled MUAs and OS platforms.

To answer directly: I'm using mutt as my MUA, and I've discovered means
of doing exactly what I'd like to be done with the subject line, but
there's always a trade-off.

···

On Wed, Sep 05, 2007 at 11:45:33AM +0900, Trans wrote:

On Sep 4, 4:56 pm, Chad Perrin <per...@apotheon.com> wrote:

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Baltasar Gracian: "A wise man gets more from his enemies than a fool from
his friends."