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Re: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?

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  Re: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2023-04-25 01:50 +0200
    Re: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable? Peter Ehlert <pb21a@sdi-baja.com> - 2023-04-25 03:00 +0200
      Re: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable? songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2023-04-25 14:50 +0200
    Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2023-04-25 06:40 +0200
      Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2023-04-25 08:50 +0200
      Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] dmacdoug <dmacdoug@usc.edu> - 2023-04-25 10:00 +0200
        Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2023-04-25 12:50 +0200
          Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2023-04-25 16:10 +0200
        Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2023-04-25 13:10 +0200
          Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] Christoph Brinkhaus <c.brinkhaus@t-online.de> - 2023-04-25 15:20 +0200
            Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2023-04-25 16:00 +0200
            Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2023-04-25 16:50 +0200
        Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com> - 2023-04-25 16:00 +0200
      Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it  imminent that bookworm becomes stable?] Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com> - 2023-04-25 15:40 +0200

#257554 — Re: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?

On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 05:52:55AM +0800, hl wrote:
> i always use stable, Thanks!

You're welcome!

And that was the entire body of your email, so that's all you had to
say, yes?

...

Please do not put important details exclusively in the Subject: header
of your email.  The purpose of a Subject: header is to allow people to
find your messages in the list archives later on, if they have a similar
problem and want to find past solutions.

Your question appears to be "What's the timeline for bookworm's release?"

We have the following resources:

 * https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBookworm
 * https://release.debian.org/bookworm/freeze_policy.html

Both of these pages tell us that the final freeze date is not yet
determined.

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#257556

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On April 24, 2023 4:39:47 PM Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 05:52:55AM +0800, hl wrote:
>> i always use stable, Thanks!
>
> You're welcome!
>
> And that was the entire body of your email, so that's all you had to
> say, yes?
>
> ...
>
> Please do not put important details exclusively in the Subject: header
> of your email.  The purpose of a Subject: header is to allow people to
> find your messages in the list archives later on, if they have a similar
> problem and want to find past solutions.
Now that you have been properly scolded.
...
Weekend of June 10

>
> Your question appears to be "What's the timeline for bookworm's release?"
>
> We have the following resources:
>
> * https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBookworm
> * https://release.debian.org/bookworm/freeze_policy.html
>
> Both of these pages tell us that the final freeze date is not yet
> determined.

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#257579

Peter Ehlert wrote:
...
> Now that you have been properly scolded.
> ...
> Weekend of June 10

  if all goes according to current plan...


  songbird

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#257557 — Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

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On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 09:27:03AM +0800, hl wrote:
> 
> On 4/25/23 07:39, Greg Wooledge wrote:

[...]

> > Please do not put important details exclusively in the Subject: header
> > of your email [...]

> i've thought it's redundant to repeat it in mail body, it's waste of
> reader's time

For some, yes. For others, no. I think this is one of the most
difficult (and interesting) things in a huge and diverse mailing
list like this: there are people with extremely different ways
of living and backgrounds.

One has to be humble and, from time to time learn that other
people's inner workings are totally different.

But this is exciting, too :-)

Cheers
-- 
t

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#257561 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

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On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 01:26:32PM +0800, hl wrote:
> 
> On 4/25/23 12:30, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

[...]

> > But this is exciting, too :-)

[...]

> i've read list archive: https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/,  i still
> don't know who can read mail body but can't read subject at same time

You have made your point, I have made mine. Let's leave it at that.

Cheers
-- 
t

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#257564 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 01:26:32PM +0800, hl wrote:
> 
> ,  i still don't know who can read mail body but can't read subject at same
> time
> 
> what do you think if i copy/paste subject to beginning of mail body to
> comply with such unwritten rule?
> 
It's not that readers can't see both the message and the subject line at 
the same time, it's more a matter of expectations.  

There are a large number of ways to read messages from the list.  I happen
to use Mutt and so I see a list of senders, subject lines, etc.  Once I
highlight a certain line and hit enter, I see the message, and 99% of the
time I read a coherent message or question, but occasionally it I might read
something like "i always use stable, Thanks!" and I wonder what that means. 
The subject line is now buried among about 8 or 10 header lines at the top
and I need to search through them if, per chance, the real question might be
there.

Then, even more importantly, if I should want to answer the question, I
would first have to copy and paste the question from the subject line into the
body before answering it, whereas if you had asked the question in the body
of the message, Mutt would take care of all the niceties for me like putting
the date, time and author of the message, followed by the question itself.

Most people's questions are too long to fit on the subject line so they 
aren't tempted to leave it out of the body.

I, for one would write the complete message in the body, then put the
question if it's that short, or a reasonable synopsis of it into the subject
line.

Don

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#257572 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

hl wrote: 
> why not use mail reader with gui, (e.g. Thunderbird)? gui allows you to get
> info easily. you don't have to remember lots of things, just a few clicks,
> you can get info you need.

We have users who are blind.

We have users who are using low-bandwidth connections.

We have users who are using tiny-screened devices.

We have users using devices with only text capabilities.

We have users who like using mutt and other text MUAs.

-dsr-

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#257590 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

hl wrote: 
> Thanks! how many users are using mail reader without gui? anyway gui is more
> friendly for many users. i suppose more users use gui. gui can show mail
> body along subject easily. it's waste of time to repeat subject in mail
> body.
> 
> it seems impossible to please everyone.

That's right. But mailing lists have conventions that have been worked
out over decades to please lots of users. When someone violates those conventions
unwittingly, someone else will tell them about that.

For folks who persist in violating those conventions, fewer people
will respond, and in particular, people with more experience will be
under-represented in those responses.

-dsr-

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#257574 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 12:39:45AM -0700, dmacdoug wrote:
> There are a large number of ways to read messages from the list.  I happen
> to use Mutt and so I see a list of senders, subject lines, etc.  Once I
> highlight a certain line and hit enter, I see the message, and 99% of the
> time I read a coherent message or question, but occasionally it I might read
> something like "i always use stable, Thanks!" and I wonder what that means. 
> The subject line is now buried among about 8 or 10 header lines at the top
> and I need to search through them if, per chance, the real question might be
> there.

Yes, this is exactly my experience also.  Mutt has a "thread view"
screen, and a "message view" screen.  The "thread view" screen shows
you the sender, date, and Subject (truncated).  Once you select the
first unread message from the "thread view" screen, you go into the
"message view" screen, where you see a selected subset of the headers,
and then the body.  You might or might not remember the Subject that
was shown on the previous screen.  You might or might not pay attention
to the Subject header among all the other headers that are shown.

But then the interesting bit happens once you've read that first message.
When you mark it for deletion, you immediately move to the next message.
You DON'T go back to the "thread view" screen.  You just see the next
message, and you can read that and mark it for deletion, and then you see
the third message, and so on.

While reading this chunk-of-messages, you probably are not reading the
Subject headers at all.  You only read (or skim) the body, hit "d",
read the next one, and so on.

Seeing a message whose content is NOT in the body is a disturbance in
the workflow, and requires us to exert some effort to try to figure out
what just happened.  (As well as the quoting stuff, already mentioned.)

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#257584 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

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Am Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 07:07:07AM -0400 schrieb Greg Wooledge:

Hello Greg,

> On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 12:39:45AM -0700, dmacdoug wrote:
> > There are a large number of ways to read messages from the list.  I happen
> > to use Mutt and so I see a list of senders, subject lines, etc.  Once I
> > highlight a certain line and hit enter, I see the message, and 99% of the
> > time I read a coherent message or question, but occasionally it I might read
> > something like "i always use stable, Thanks!" and I wonder what that means. 
> > The subject line is now buried among about 8 or 10 header lines at the top
> > and I need to search through them if, per chance, the real question might be
> > there.
> 
> Yes, this is exactly my experience also.  Mutt has a "thread view"
> screen, and a "message view" screen.  The "thread view" screen shows
> you the sender, date, and Subject (truncated).  Once you select the
> first unread message from the "thread view" screen, you go into the
> "message view" screen, where you see a selected subset of the headers,
> and then the body.  You might or might not remember the Subject that
> was shown on the previous screen.  You might or might not pay attention
> to the Subject header among all the other headers that are shown.
Yes, I think in
http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/#concept-screens-and-menus
the "thread view" is called "index" and the "message view" is called
"pager". Your naming is more clear :-).
> 
> But then the interesting bit happens once you've read that first message.
> When you mark it for deletion, you immediately move to the next message.
> You DON'T go back to the "thread view" screen.  You just see the next
> message, and you can read that and mark it for deletion, and then you see
> the third message, and so on.
Yes, this is annoying. There are two things to countermeasure that
by configuration in the users muttrc file.

1. Do not hide the "thread view" when being in the "message view".
set pager_index_lines=6
On your installation it seems to be 0. In the example you will see
five lines of the "thread view" plus a header line. On my installation
the tiny "thread view" appears on top of the bigger "message view".

2. Include the Subject in the output of the shown message
You can include or ignore fields of the header to the information
shown at the top of the message. Example lines are below.
ignore Content-Type User-Agent X-Mailer
unignore From Subject Message-Id

May be the suggestions are useful.

Kind regards,
Christoph
-- 
Ist die Katze gesund
schmeckt sie dem Hund.

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#257589 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 03:18:21PM +0200, Christoph Brinkhaus wrote:
> Am Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 07:07:07AM -0400 schrieb Greg Wooledge:
> > But then the interesting bit happens once you've read that first message.
> > When you mark it for deletion, you immediately move to the next message.
> > You DON'T go back to the "thread view" screen.  You just see the next
> > message, and you can read that and mark it for deletion, and then you see
> > the third message, and so on.
> Yes, this is annoying. There are two things to countermeasure that
> by configuration in the users muttrc file.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.  This is not "annoying".  This is
efficient.  This is how I prefer to read mail.  I like it this way.

It's about workflow habits.  If there are 20 unread messages from mailing
lists and spammers sitting in my inbox, I want to blast through them all
as quickly as possible.  I read the first message body, decide whether
it's something I care about based *solely on what I'm seeing* in the
body, and then typically move on to the next message.

If the message has content that catches my eye, then I'll slow down and
read it in more detail.  Perhaps I'll reply to it.

If the message doesn't have anything interesting to me, then I hit "d"
and repeat this procedure for the next message.

> 1. Do not hide the "thread view" when being in the "message view".
> set pager_index_lines=6
> On your installation it seems to be 0. In the example you will see
> five lines of the "thread view" plus a header line. On my installation
> the tiny "thread view" appears on top of the bigger "message view".
> 
> 2. Include the Subject in the output of the shown message
> You can include or ignore fields of the header to the information
> shown at the top of the message. Example lines are below.
> ignore Content-Type User-Agent X-Mailer
> unignore From Subject Message-Id

The Subject is already one of the headers shown when I read a message.
That's not the issue.

The issue is that I don't *look at that part of the screen* when I'm
blasting through messages in bulk.  I only read the bodies, unless
something demands that I look at the top part of the screen -- for example,
a body that just says "thanks!" or "see Subject".

Similarly, that first suggestion would just add more cruft that I won't
look at when I'm in mass-read-and-delete mode.  Looking at it would just
slow me down, and more importantly, would require a break from my
habitual workflow.

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#257594 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

On Tue 25 Apr 2023 at 15:18:21 (+0200), Christoph Brinkhaus wrote:
> Am Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 07:07:07AM -0400 schrieb Greg Wooledge:
> > On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 12:39:45AM -0700, dmacdoug wrote:
> > > There are a large number of ways to read messages from the list.  I happen
> > > to use Mutt and so I see a list of senders, subject lines, etc.  Once I
> > > highlight a certain line and hit enter, I see the message, and 99% of the
> > > time I read a coherent message or question, but occasionally it I might read
> > > something like "i always use stable, Thanks!" and I wonder what that means. 
> > > The subject line is now buried among about 8 or 10 header lines at the top
> > > and I need to search through them if, per chance, the real question might be
> > > there.
> > 
> > Yes, this is exactly my experience also.  Mutt has a "thread view"
> > screen, and a "message view" screen.  The "thread view" screen shows
> > you the sender, date, and Subject (truncated).  Once you select the
> > first unread message from the "thread view" screen, you go into the
> > "message view" screen, where you see a selected subset of the headers,
> > and then the body.  You might or might not remember the Subject that
> > was shown on the previous screen.  You might or might not pay attention
> > to the Subject header among all the other headers that are shown.
> Yes, I think in
> http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/#concept-screens-and-menus
> the "thread view" is called "index" and the "message view" is called
> "pager". Your naming is more clear :-).

Type o f and your "thread view" is no longer clear, which is why the
documentation uses the neutral term "index", which can be sorted by
Date/Frm/Recv/Subj/tO/Thread/Unsort/siZe/sCore/sPam/Label.

> > But then the interesting bit happens once you've read that first message.
> > When you mark it for deletion, you immediately move to the next message.
> > You DON'T go back to the "thread view" screen.  You just see the next
> > message, and you can read that and mark it for deletion, and then you see
> > the third message, and so on.
> Yes, this is annoying. There are two things to countermeasure that
> by configuration in the users muttrc file.
> 
> 1. Do not hide the "thread view" when being in the "message view".
> set pager_index_lines=6
> On your installation it seems to be 0. In the example you will see
> five lines of the "thread view" plus a header line. On my installation
> the tiny "thread view" appears on top of the bigger "message view".

I used to do that at work, with a second screen turned on its side
to view a portrait aspect. Nowadays, with a conventional landscape
screen and larger fonts (weakening eyesight), there isn't enough
real estate to allow for a thread view at the top. I prefer to see
more of the message content in one view.

> 2. Include the Subject in the output of the shown message
> You can include or ignore fields of the header to the information
> shown at the top of the message. Example lines are below.
> ignore Content-Type User-Agent X-Mailer
> unignore From Subject Message-Id

ignore *   is useful for ignoring everything, so that you get
just the fields that you unignore.

But there's no easy way to make the first paragraph coherent
once it's been beheaded. Sure, this OP was trivial, and gained
nothing from the message body, but in a serious technical post,
you want the opening statement to be a cohernt whole.

Cheers,
David.

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#257588 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

On Tue, Apr 25, 2023 at 5:36 AM hl <hlyg2023@outlook.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 4/25/23 15:39, dmacdoug wrote:
> > It's not that readers can't see both the message and the subject line at
> > the same time, it's more a matter of expectations.
> >
> > There are a large number of ways to read messages from the list.  I happen
> > to use Mutt and so I see a list of senders, subject lines, etc.  Once I
> > highlight a certain line and hit enter, I see the message, and 99% of the
> > time I read a coherent message or question, but occasionally it I might read
> > something like "i always use stable, Thanks!" and I wonder what that means.
> > The subject line is now buried among about 8 or 10 header lines at the top
> > and I need to search through them if, per chance, the real question might be
> > there.
> why not use mail reader with gui, (e.g. Thunderbird)? gui allows you to
> get info easily. you don't have to remember lots of things, just a few
> clicks, you can get info you need.
> > Then, even more importantly, if I should want to answer the question, I
> > would first have to copy and paste the question from the subject line into the
> > body before answering it, whereas if you had asked the question in the body
> > of the message, Mutt would take care of all the niceties for me like putting
> > the date, time and author of the message, followed by the question itself.
> modern mail reader can auto-fill Subject when you reply, that's how list
> subscription works, it fill Subject with confirmation code for you
> > Most people's questions are too long to fit on the subject line so they
> > aren't tempted to leave it out of the body.
> >
> > I, for one would write the complete message in the body, then put the
> > question if it's that short, or a reasonable synopsis of it into the subject
> > line.

Plonk!

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#257586 — Re: Putting important stuff exclusively in the subject [was: is it imminent that bookworm becomes stable?]

On Tue, 25 Apr 2023 13:26:32 +0800
hl <hlyg2023@outlook.com> wrote:

> i've read list archive: https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/,  i
> still don't know who can read mail body but can't read subject at
> same time

Exactly so: you don't know "who can read mail body but can't read
subject at same time". So you should not presume that everyone can. You
have no idea how the other person's mail reader works.

> 
> what do you think if i copy/paste subject to beginning of mail body
> to comply with such unwritten rule?

That would work.

Perhaps a better technique if you are starting a new topic would be to
write the body of the email first, then write the subject as a summary
of the email.


-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

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