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Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length.

From Lawrence Woodman <lorrywoodman@gmail.com>
Newsgroups comp.infosystems.gopher
Subject Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length.
Date 2025-02-28 09:35 +0000
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <vps00l$3jnu6$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References <vpl3rj$24spt$1@dont-email.me> <vpru4s$3iqou$1@dont-email.me>

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On Fri, 28 Feb 2025 09:03:25 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence Woodman wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Feb 2025 18:57:55 -0000 (UTC), IanJ wrote:
> 
>> Fellow gophers,
>> 
>> I recently discovered that UMN Gopher client has some rather odd
>> behaviour when deciding if it should truncate menu titles.
>> 
>> The RFC suggests they should be kept below 70 characters. I have always
>> addhered to this and used 69 but I received a report, after adding the
>> date to the end of some lines, that my titles were now being truncated
>> when viewed on an 80 character display.
>> 
>> This didn't add up, quite literally, so I did a little investigation of
>> the source code. It seems 13 characters are reserved for the left info
>> margin. The margin can be less depending on the index number of the
>> menu item, this is a problem in itself. But following its calculation
>> logic, you have COLS - 13 resulting in the maxwidth. 80 - 13 = 67, so
>> even though my lines are addhering to the RFC, the client thinks they
>> are too long.
>> 
>> The irony is that truncated lines have the last two characters replaced
>> with '..'. Which actually overwrites the last two digits of the date.
>> If the accounting was correct, then it would remain untouched...
>> 
>> I wrote a phlog post about it here with more detail:
>> gopher://gopher.icu/0/phlog/Computing/Display-lines-and-UMN-gopher.md
>> 
>> In the meantime I shortened my menu titles to 67 characters to stop the
>> phantom truncation. But as per the phlog post, I'm wondering what to do
>> about it...
>> 
>> Any helpful suggestions or guidance greatfully received.
> 
> 
> It would be worth submitting a patch to alter the client's display so
> that it only takes 11 characters on the left hand side and makes the
> correct calculation.

> [SNIP]

I've been thinking about this a little more and rereading the RFC and it
does say 'Clients may truncate to a length convenient to them'.  Although
this client's calculation as to when to truncate and show '..' is a little
off, the decision to truncate at less than 69 characters makes some sense
given how it displays menus, especially when you consider that types such
as <HTML> are indicated after the title.  It might be that we have to
accept that titles can be truncated and plan our sites accordingly.

Lorry
 
---
XCCP: A Shell Extension for CP/M
https://techtinkering.com/articles/xccp-a-shell-extension-for-cpm/

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Thread

UMN Gopher - menu title length. IanJ <SPAMian_jones_01@yahoo.co.uk.invalid> - 2025-02-25 18:57 +0000
  Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. Stone Fox <stone@unix.dog> - 2025-02-26 21:29 +0000
  Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. Lawrence Woodman <lorrywoodman@gmail.com> - 2025-02-28 09:03 +0000
    Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. Lawrence Woodman <lorrywoodman@gmail.com> - 2025-02-28 09:35 +0000
      Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. Stone Fox <stone@unix.dog> - 2025-02-28 22:21 +0000
    Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. IanJ <SPAMian_jones_01@yahoo.co.uk.invalid> - 2025-03-01 20:30 +0000
      Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. "Arti F. Idiot" <addr@is.invalid> - 2025-03-01 20:42 -0700
        Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> - 2025-03-02 15:59 +1000
        Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. IanJ <SPAMian_jones_01@yahoo.co.uk.invalid> - 2025-03-02 10:58 +0000
          Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. jeojet@not.valid - 2025-03-02 16:13 +0000
            Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. IanJ <SPAMian_jones_01@yahoo.co.uk.invalid> - 2025-03-02 18:36 +0000
          Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. morena <morena@morena.rip> - 2025-03-03 20:39 +0100
            Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. IanJ <SPAMian_jones_01@yahoo.co.uk.invalid> - 2025-03-03 21:00 +0000
              Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. morena <morena@morena.rip> - 2025-03-03 23:42 +0100
                Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. IanJ <SPAMian_jones_01@yahoo.co.uk.invalid> - 2025-03-03 23:04 +0000
      Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. Stone Fox <stone@unix.dog> - 2025-03-02 21:34 +0000
        Re: UMN Gopher - menu title length. IanJ <SPAMian_jones_01@yahoo.co.uk.invalid> - 2025-03-03 23:23 +0000

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