From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-09-04T03:27:28+09:00
Subject: Re: subject line

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

> On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 08:41:53AM +0900, Dan Zwell wrote:
>> Devi Web Development 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.
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------
>>> Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney
>>> Devi Web Development
>>> Devi.WebMaster@gMail.com
>>>
>>
>> Quoting http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/lkml/#s3-19 :
>>
>>     It would increase the size of the Subject: line. This is a  
>> problem,
>> as it limits the amount of useful information that can be seen in the
>> Subject: line, making it harder to scan through a list of subject  
>> lines
>> looking for interesting subjects.
>>
>> Mail can easily be filtered based on the "To:" line. This list has  
>> too
>> much volume not to be filtered (probably by everyone that uses  
>> it), so I
>> don't see an advantage to adding [Ruby]. Further, I don't want to  
>> give
>> up even six (really seven) characters that we can use to express
>> ourselves. Thoughts?
>
> 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.

> 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.

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.

James Edward Gray II