OT - the OT tag and the Re bug.

I expect so, but that's because sorting by thread and sorting by subject
are different operations. That they yield different results should be
no surprise.

When I didn't know better, I thought that threads were defined by the
subject line. There are advantages to sorting by subject line, and some
readers do not sort by threads unless set to "read all". Including
plonked posts.

My point being that this "bug" doesn't seem "common".

Actually, it is.

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?
I don't know; why should you?

Courtesy to those who need that wrap. It's a small thing, but a nice
thing to do.

(Actually, since hard returns are a problem for wrapping readers I'm on
the fence about this one, but I've been asked to wrap so I wrap.)

It's easy to avoid using the colon in subject line prepends. Doing so
makes a better experience for some others. But this is Usenet. Do what
you want. At least now we know what the consequences of the colon are.
I didn't before, and wondered why things got split.

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.

On Mon, 28 May 2007 15:11:37 +0000, Jose wrote:

I expect so, but that's because sorting by thread and sorting by subject
are different operations. That they yield different results should be
no surprise.

When I didn't know better, I thought that threads were defined by the
subject line.

Fair enough.

There are advantages to sorting by subject line,

Perhaps this is the problem; I'm not aware of these advantages. What are
they?

and some
readers do not sort by threads unless set to "read all". Including
plonked posts.

I'm not aware of readers with this behavior. How is this manifested?
That is, what happens if one is not reading all and one sorts by thread?

- Andrew

Perhaps this is the problem; I'm not aware of
these advantages. What are they? [...]

When a subject line is changed, it is a good indication that the
conversation has changed. (the converse is of course not true).
Perhaps it's a bug (or feature) in my reader (Netscape 7.2) that when
sorting by threads, the sort list can't be alphabetized. In fact, I
can't figure out in what order they are presented (it could be, for
example, the order of the date of the latest post, the earliest post,
the earliest retained post...) My reader saves (on my hard drive) the
last x days worth of posts so that I can go back, even to plonked posts
(which I merely mark as read) without connecting to the net again.

Sometimes people reply (physically) to a post as a convenience, while
replying (semantically) to a different post, or combine replies to
several posts into one (I like when people do that intellegently).

Maybe my sort-by-thread is just buggy. But I doubt I'm the only one
with buggy software.

That is, what happens if one is not reading all and one sorts by thread?

On my reader, you can sort by thread, but you can't pick the order. You
can't collapse threads unless you are viewing all. Of course, viewing
by subject you can't collapse threads either.

Also, sometimes things just "get funky". I can't explain it because I
haven't done it enough - I just go back to reading by subject.

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.

On Mon, 28 May 2007 21:29:37 -0400, Jose wrote:

When a subject line is changed, it is a good indication that the
conversation has changed. (the converse is of course not true). Perhaps
it's a bug (or feature) in my reader (Netscape 7.2) that when sorting by
threads, the sort list can't be alphabetized.

My newsreader doesn't "sort" by thread. It will "group" by thread. This
does act a lot like sorting, in that the messages w/in a thread are
displayed in an order consistent with their relationships (ie. a reply to
A will follow A). But it doesn't sort over multiple threads as those
messages not in a same thread have no relation on which an ordering
decision can be made.

So there's some other sort criteria for that (date, subject, received
date, etc.) that used for this purpose.

Netscape does it differently?

[...]


Maybe my sort-by-thread is just buggy. But I doubt I'm the only one
with buggy software.

The Internet isn't bug-free yet?

From what you're describing, it sounds like Netscape's news reading
capability is broken in several different ways. Why not simply use
something else? There are plenty of alternatives; it seems silly to
settle, even if it is a small thing (ie. not an important issue, like
high-wing vs. low-wing {8^).

- Andrew

But it doesn't sort over multiple threads as those
messages not in a same thread have no relation on which an ordering
decision can be made.

Netscape 7.2 (which I use) cannot sort threads by subject line. (by
this I don't mean messages within a thread, which should be in thread
order, but rather, the group of threads themselves)

Of course, since threads are not defined by subject line, this is
understandable, nonetheless, threads are usually closely correlated with
subject line, and when I remember a thread I want to look at (or avoid),
it is usually by subject line.

=Messages= can be sorted by subject line, but then the OT colon bug
shows up.

The Internet isn't bug-free yet?

It was bug free the day before it was born.

From what you're describing, it sounds like Netscape's news reading
capability is broken in several different ways.

No, actually it is probably working as designed, since threads are not
defined by subject line. That is, subject lines can change within a
thread, so which subject line should be used?

Why not simply use
something else?

I could, I suppose, but that's not the point. My point is that I have
(re)discovered an (admittedly small but vexing) adverse consequence of
people using a colon after a prepend. With this knowledge, those that
care about this adverse consequence to others may wish to avoid
following prepends with a colon.

That is all.

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.

On Tue, 29 May 2007 15:18:36 -0400, Jose wrote:

But it doesn't sort over multiple threads as those messages not in a
same thread have no relation on which an ordering decision can be made.

Netscape 7.2 (which I use) cannot sort threads by subject line. (by this
I don't mean messages within a thread, which should be in thread order,
but rather, the group of threads themselves)

Of course, since threads are not defined by subject line, this is
understandable,

If I understand what you've written, I disagree: it is clearly a bug and
not "understandable". As you point out, messages w/in a thread should be
in an order consistent with thread ordering. But the relative ordering of
threads themselves is - obviously - independent of threading. One should
be able to order threads however one wants (subject, date, etc.).

Not being able to do this isn't understandable (except as a "whoops!" {8^).

- Andrew

If I understand what you've written, I disagree: it is clearly a bug and
not "understandable". As you point out, messages w/in a thread should be
in an order consistent with thread ordering. But the relative ordering of
threads themselves is - obviously - independent of threading. One should
be able to order threads however one wants (subject, date, etc.).

Suppose you start a thread called
OT: bugs in aviation.
The response to the first message comes from a "good" reader, and has
the subject
OT: bugs in aviation.
The response to that response is from a "bad" reader, and has the subject
OT: bugs in aviation.
Somebody else, with a "bad" reader, responds to the first message. His
subject line is
bugs in aviation.
Somebody with a "good" reader replies to that message. The subject is
bugs in aviation.
Someone with a good reader replies to the first message, and overrules
the subject line. His subject line is:
GPS bugs (was OT: bugs in aviation)
Someone with a good reader replies to this message. The subject is:
GPS bugs (was OT: bugs in aviation)
Someone with a very bad reader replies to the "overrule" message. The
subject line is:
bugs in aviation)
(everything in front of the colon was replaced with "re")
etc.

On Monday the first of Augtober, I read the first message in the thread.
By Tuesday, the rest of the messages have come in.
On Wednesday, I sign on again. I want to see a list of THREADS,
alphabetized by SUBJECT LINE. (I don't want to see a list of all
messages, just all threads, and the number of messages in each thread)

So, how should these messages be sorted?

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.