Re: Majordomo drops multi-line Subject:

Tom Lane wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> Even though multi-line Subject: is theoretically legal according to the
> >> RFCs, it's certainly an awful idea; how many MUAs do you know that
> >> provide more than one line to display the subject in a normal view?
> >> So I don't really care if Majordomo truncates the subject --- I wouldn't
> >> see the rest of it anyway.
>
> > Huh, but the MUA auto-unfolds it for view. Both mutt and Elm do that
> > fine -- the folding and unfolding. I would think exmh is pretty
> > thoroughly broken if it didn't.
>
> Well, if I actually choose to read the message, sure I'll see all of it.
> The point here is that you've got one line (and only about 50 characters
> at that) to get my attention, and so I'm perfectly fine with list
> software that, erm, strongly encourages brevity of Subject: headers.
> If you're composing a paragraph it ought to be in the message body,
> not the subject.

Have a look at how mutt displays the message index:

69 L Aug 23 Zdenek Kotala ( 37) Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to -
70 L Aug 23 Bruce Momjian ( 52) ->Re: [PATCHES] Allow commenting of variables in

Note that the rest of the second subject line could still use the same
space as the line above it.

I mostly don't use 80-line terminals to read mail anymore because
there's so much stuff that's too wide. Subjects have already less space
available because of those [FOOBAR] stuff that's prepended to it. (I
noticed a couple of days ago that you strip those. Maybe I should do
that too.)

In any case I don't see any reason to let the broken software continue
to be broken. Surely there must be an updated version which corrects
this bug? A patch at least? I mean, I can't be the only one
complaining about it.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support