Re: [PATCH] Doc: note minimum scissors line length for mailinfo

jrnieder@gmail.com writes:

quoted

+	(dash "-") marks and is at least 8 bytes long ("-- >8 --") is

nit: I think "characters" instead of "bytes" would focus a bit more on
the intent.  It's true that characters and bytes coincide in this
example, but using characters might be a bit more in the terms that
the user is already thinking in.

By the way, is this the right criterion?  Perhaps an alternative
method would be to make "--8<--" count as a scissors like after all.
What do you think?

Mildly negative.

It certainly was fun to declare that users can use anything that
look like perforation drawn on paper, and to pile more and more
heuristics to detect such a line.  But I think, instead of
describing all these details in the manual, telling the users to
always write "-- >8 --" and nothing else would be a better approach.

It would save them time.

Let's not waste people's time by encouraging them to be "creative"
in areas that do not make the world a better place.  How flexible
they can be when drawing the line to mark the part that recipent
can discard does not matter in the end result of their work.

Thanks.

Junio C Hamano wrote:

It certainly was fun to declare that users can use anything that
look like perforation drawn on paper, and to pile more and more
heuristics to detect such a line.  But I think, instead of
describing all these details in the manual, telling the users to
always write "-- >8 --" and nothing else would be a better approach.

It would save them time.

Agreed, I think this is a much better direction.

Another advantage is that it makes us easier to change the heuristics,
confident that we are training users to aim for the simple and
reliable case instead of the edge cases that may need to be tweaked
over time.

Thanks,
Jonathan

On Mon Sep 28, 2020 at 12:00 PM PDT, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

It certainly was fun to declare that users can use anything that
look like perforation drawn on paper, and to pile more and more
heuristics to detect such a line.  But I think, instead of
describing all these details in the manual, telling the users to
always write "-- >8 --" and nothing else would be a better approach.

It would save them time.

Agreed, I think this is a much better direction.

Another advantage is that it makes us easier to change the heuristics,
confident that we are training users to aim for the simple and
reliable case instead of the edge cases that may need to be tweaked
over time.

Sounds good to me.  How about:

Remove everything in body before a scissors line ("-- >8 --"). The line
represents scissors and perforation marks, and is used to request the
reader to cut the message at that line.  If that line appears in the
body of the message before the patch, everything before it (including
the scissors line itself) is ignored when this option is used.

Etiquette question: Should a v2 patch be a new thread or reply to
this one?

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 12:20:31PM -0700, Evan Gates wrote:

On Mon Sep 28, 2020 at 12:00 PM PDT, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

quoted

Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

It certainly was fun to declare that users can use anything that
look like perforation drawn on paper, and to pile more and more
heuristics to detect such a line.  But I think, instead of
describing all these details in the manual, telling the users to
always write "-- >8 --" and nothing else would be a better approach.

It would save them time.

Agreed, I think this is a much better direction.

Another advantage is that it makes us easier to change the heuristics,
confident that we are training users to aim for the simple and
reliable case instead of the edge cases that may need to be tweaked
over time.

Sounds good to me.  How about:

Remove everything in body before a scissors line ("-- >8 --"). The line
represents scissors and perforation marks, and is used to request the
reader to cut the message at that line.  If that line appears in the
body of the message before the patch, everything before it (including
the scissors line itself) is ignored when this option is used.

Etiquette question: Should a v2 patch be a new thread or reply to
this one?

Typically you would reply to this thread, ie, to
20200925191659.31375-1-evan.gates@gmail.com

Kevin