OT - the OT tag and the Re bug.

I first identified this problem in the sim group, but it happens here
too. I'm sure it happens everywhere, but since I live here, this is
where I'm concerned.

The subject line of a reply universally has the letters "r" "e" and a
colon in front. The software does this automatically. But to avoid an
infinite regress ("...") the software also senses a
pre-existing "" and eats it first. Most software is good at that.
Some isn't.

Seems one common bug is to simply eat everything in front of the colon.
(I presume the first colon) before prepending the "". This has an
unfortunate side effect for those who follow a prepend (such as "OT" or
"POL") with a colon. The prepend gets eaten, and replaced with "",
and newsreaders who sort by subject have that chain of responses mixed
in with their on-topic subjects, negating the effect of the prepend in
the first place. The reply is still of the same thread (defined by the
message ID) as the original "OT:" post, but sorting by threads doesn't
work well, especially when only unread posts are desired.

An example of this can be seen in the "OT: Electric cars?" thread.

A solution is for posters to =not= follow a prepend with a colon. Use a
dash, or nothing at all, and this won't happen.

Just a thought.

Jose
--
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that just want to
know what button to push, and those that want to know what happens when
they push the button.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:
The subject line of a reply universally has the letters "r" "e" and a
colon in front. The software does this automatically. But to avoid an
infinite regress ("...") the software also senses a
pre-existing "" and eats it first. Most software is good at that.
Some isn't.

Seems one common bug is to simply eat everything in front of the colon.

The following newsreaders used for replies in the "OT: Electric cars"
thread "do the right thing":

Xnews, KNode, Trn, Forte

The following newsreader used for replies in that thread "do the wrong
thing":

MS Outlook Express

Another MS blunder.

On Sun, 27 May 2007 00:44:12 +0000, Jim Logajan wrote:


Seems one common bug is to simply eat everything in front of the colon.

The following newsreaders used for replies in the "OT: Electric cars"
thread "do the right thing":

Xnews, KNode, Trn, Forte

Pan and whatever I've used previously. I've never heard of this "common
bug". And I've been USENETing since the early 80s or so. I've also
long used a string followed by a colon in the subject line in various
situations (ie. "Q:") and never perceived a problem.


The following newsreader used for replies in that thread "do the wrong
thing":

MS Outlook Express

Another MS blunder.

Ah. Dog Bites Man.

BTW, whats' wrong with displayed threading by threads instead of subject?
The latter can display messages in an invalid order (with "order" being
the partial ordering based upon the relationship reply-response); that
doesn't occur when "In-reply-to" or "References" are used.

- Andrew

I've also long used a string followed
by a colon in the subject line in various
situations (ie. "Q:") and never perceived a problem.

The problem would be percieved by others.

BTW, whats' wrong with displayed threading by threads instead of subject?

Nothing, but there's something wrong with having to. Sorting gets
screwed up in some readers when one must sort by threads if one is only
viewing unread messages.

Jose
--
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that just want to
know what button to push, and those that want to know what happens when
they push the button.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Recently, Jim Logajan posted:

The following newsreaders used for replies in the "OT: Electric cars"
thread "do the right thing":

Xnews, KNode, Trn, Forte

The following newsreader used for replies in that thread "do the wrong
thing":

MS Outlook Express

Interesting. How did you arrive at that?

Another MS blunder.

Perhaps so. But not nearly the blunder that exists in "MSMail", the Vista
replacement for OE.

Neil

On Sun, 27 May 2007 23:19:46 GMT, "Neil Gould" wrote in
:

Recently, Jim Logajan posted:

The following newsreaders used for replies in the "OT: Electric cars"
thread "do the right thing":

Xnews, KNode, Trn, Forte

The following newsreader used for replies in that thread "do the wrong
thing":

MS Outlook Express

Interesting. How did you arrive at that?

I'll bet he read the headers for the replies in the thread.

You sent your post with:

X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1409

If you look in the headers for this post, you will probably
be able to find out what newsreader I'm using.

Marty
--
Big-8 newsgroups: humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, talk.*
See http://www.big-8.org for info on how to add or remove newsgroups.

On Sun, 27 May 2007 16:21:15 +0000, Jose wrote:

I've also long used a string followed by a colon in the subject line in
various situations (ie. "Q:") and never perceived a problem.

The problem would be percieved by others.

It would be perceived by me if anyone had replied to such a message, if I
followed the "bug" explanation correctly. More, USENET being what it is,
someone would have complained about it in the years I've been doing this.



BTW, whats' wrong with displayed threading by threads instead of
subject?

Nothing, but there's something wrong with having to.

Why? What's wrong with something being required to be done "the right
way" for that something to work properly?

Sorting gets screwed
up in some readers when one must sort by threads if one is only viewing
unread messages.

How? I see no such artifact of "screwed up" sorting, and I've been
sorting by thread for quite a while.

- Andrew

It would be perceived by me if anyone had replied to such a message, if I
followed the "bug" explanation correctly.

Go back to the thread I referenced, view all messages, sort by subject
line. Do you see one set of messages without the OT(colon) prepend and
another set with, probably sorted in different places in the alphabet?

More, USENET being what it is, someone would have complained
about it in the years I've been doing this.

Ummmm... so?

How? I see no such artifact of "screwed up" sorting, and I've been
sorting by thread for quite a while.

Yanno, I don't have a problem with lines longer than 70 characters. My
newsreader wraps them for me. Why should I wrap my lines for other people?

Jose
--
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that just want to
know what button to push, and those that want to know what happens when
they push the button.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Martin X. Moleski, SJ" wrote:
I'll bet he read the headers for the replies in the thread.

That is indeed what I did.

Recently, Jim Logajan posted:

"Martin X. Moleski, SJ" wrote:
I'll bet he read the headers for the replies in the thread.

That is indeed what I did.

I was asking how you arrived at the conclusion that Outlook Express was
one of the apps that "did the wrong thing". As you can tell from the
headers, I'm using OE. Notice that I also modified the subject to include
a couple more colons, which, as you can see, were posted correctly. So...
how was it that you concluded that OE "did the wrong thing"?

Neil