Topic: Requesting to remove the Subject length limitation (Read 499 times)

IMO, rather than implementing this 1.5x increase in local boards, I think it's better if it was added to certain languages. Although I'm not sure whether it's possible or not!

The only reason I am saying this because some of the local languages doesn't have their own boards yet. Like us! So if the increase was added to local boards it wouldn't matter to us. But if the rule could be added to certain UTF encoded characters/languages, then it won't matter whether we have any boards or not. The system would just detect what kind of UTF encoded character a user wrote and apply that 1.5x increase, my two cents opinion....

It's just a theory! I'm not any god level tech expert!

Since this really only pertains to local boards, we should increase the limits to 1.5x so that they can have a similar character count to English language topics while not givng spammers too long of a title to work with.

Local languages have about half as much space to work with as English, since this is encoded as UTF-16. In some cases, even less, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16 .

Your concern is valid and I've faced the same issue many times. At the same time, there is what we call a "summary," you can utilize it here. You can write the whole topic's content in a place and summarise it in such a way that contains all the needed details. I do this when the space created doesn't allow me to write the topic as I want and it still makes sense, intriguing and precise. Mind you, they call it a "topic," it shouldn't be an essay or as if you are writing a detailed sentence.

It's challenging for both English and local language topics. It's not possible to remove the limitation on length for just the local board subject field. It will have to be a general thing.

In the meantime, this is how I go about mine when it becomes too lengthy.  I write the sentence and add .... to the end. Showing there is a continuation. When you start writing in the big text field then you can completely write the subject there in bold letters before writing what you have in mind.

You see how important correctly written title is?
In your title for this topic you clearly used words remove length limitation.
Making title length longer won't make it better, so better to consider title more as a short teaser.

I am not against this, but what am seeing that should be considered here is about the main point of discussion, which is the subject length extension, which i don't see with much necessity because a title or subject as the case may be should only talk about the content we are about to read or go through, a title shouldn't carry the whole summary of the content, but instead a glance of what the content is all about, which is also expected to serves as the introductory part of what we are having in consideration if extended, do we think it will still make much of sense like that.

I wouldn't say completely remove it or anything, maybe like increase it a little bit, you know what I mean. I am aware there are consequences and some users may abuse this.

Normally nobody needs a longer title. But you see the title of this topic? I'm pretty sure, if i were to post this same title in the local section in my language, it wouldn't fit.

I wouldn't remove this limitation, I am sure spammers and scammers would abuse this with their crap.
There are some rear cases when longer title is needed, but most of the times I prefer to have shorter and more concise title that draws attention of readers.
You can always post longer title or subtitle inside post, and than write the rest of the content.

Yes, if we fiddle with some PHP and theymos or Cyrus agree to increase the column size in the DB.

Long story short!

So is it possible to increase the limit slightly? Or it's just extra work, pain in the ass?

Bingo.

I didn't even realize that subjects were being stored as HTML entities. That is quite inefficient. I was under the impression that they were represented as bytes. At the very least, with two bytes for each entity.

Though at this point, the only valid database modification allowed by the DB engine right now would be to just increase the text field's character limit in the DB.

Thank you for taking this matter with more seriousness. Yes, if you take a look at this problem from a local person's perspective, you'll understand the struggle we face when choosing a title! We have to make the title easily understandable, and at the same time we have to adjust it to the limit. Since it's not a global issue but mostly local language related, nobody took this seriously! That is the only reason I can think of.

Every time I made any post or posted any translations, my title was cut off. And every time I had to edit it out, make it short! Like you said, a title is everything, it gives the user concept of the topic without even reading it. But for me, I am not satisfied with the title I was forced to choose!

If you look below, you'll see that the current title that I was forced to use and the meaning of the current title. I doesn't contain any words like "How to, Guide, Tutorial"; it just says "Customized Bitcoin Address (Vanitygen)". And from a user's first look, he'll just think this as a topic related to a custom BTC address, maybe some article, stuff like that. He won't understand that it's a guide to create the vanity address, not before he reads the whole topic.


I would have been satisfied if I could use this title below, but unfortunately i couldn't!


Note that, I don't complain or blame the current character length limit. Honestly speaking, it is enough, but for the English language only! But local language doesn't count here! 

A very good suggestion when seen or considered from the context and examples you provided.
I personally have thought about this some time in the past when I used to be very active in creating new thread, but I really never took the issue too seriously to want to bring it up here for discussion and possible solution.

I can remember vividly that there have been several occasions where while I am trying to create a perfect title for my thread, I end up with no choice but to look for a way to make it shorter because the limit has been reached and I can't further or else, I will just end up with a shit title, this is with English actually, so now, I try to imagine how stressful it must be when typing in other languages that takes up more spaces like you said.. Title of a thread is everything, as with a very good title, one sometimes may not even have to read the message body to already understand what is being discussed about.

I may not vote for the subject length limitation to be removed completely, but then, a little bit of increase should be fine.
And if it will be possible to allow more subject length in the local boards alone, that also will be very nice.

What's the size in byte of subject box where title of thread is written in Bitcointalk forum.
So the thread subject box has a capacity of 64 characters=64 bytes.
So the length of the thread subject need to be concise. We can also look out for applicable special characters to minimize the space consumption while giving title to our thread. Atleast that would help in a long run while those in power as Theymos have a review of this summon.
It is actually hectic finding how to put some tense of thread subject to match the body of the thread on a brief character.

I mean, Bitcointalk hasn't chosen to involve UTF-16 in this, it's just how the maxlength attribute works:

Of the barriers that I pointed out in my previous post, it's mostly the 255-byte database limitation that's behind OP's example problem...

The title that OP wanted to use would have almost made it past the maxlength check, and would have, I think, made it past the entity-aware PHP check(s). The main problem, I think, is with the "ISO-8859-1 with entities" representation being truncated to 255 bytes by the database.

The intended title would have been represented like this (approximately; I haven't really rolled up my sleeves and looked into this deeply yet):


And chopping that ~480-byte representation down to 255 bytes is what's behind the title changing from this:


To this (with maybe some extra junk at the end, too, like ):


And that result is what forced OP to come up with a title short-enough to survive the truncation:


(So, long story short, I think if theymos left everything else the same, but changed the column's data type from TINYTEXT to TEXT, and then changed the 255 in that SUBSTRING('$msgOptions[subject]', 1, 255) to something a little roomier, then entity-rich topic titles would stop getting truncated so aggressively. But, like I said, I'm no DBA, and I can't anyway even see, let alone reason about, Bitcointalk's actual database schema, so, only theymos can really estimate if this is worth doing or not.)

We should be able to easily double the limit without having to touch the database, or creating exorbitantly long subjects that make the browser's horizontal viewport very large (i.e. scrolling horizontally to read the title).

Also, nobody really uses UTF-16 anymore. It's just a relic from Java and other legacy systems. Almost everything is done in UTF-8 nowadays, but I know charset conversion is a PITA so let's leave that be.

Personally speaking, if it was my own topic, I would have tried to make it short! But since it's a translation and sometimes related to local boards, that's what's concerns me! Other than that it's totally not an issue!


VALID point! I also imagined this scenario, after seeing some of the comments, it could lead to some catastrophic instability! And I certainly don't wanna give them any pain !

My first thought too.  Use this opportunity to reduce the "content creep" that happens during translation.



Changing this would be trivial on PG's side, but possibly catastrophic on Theymos' end.

Thank you, PowerGlove, for the quick response and the detailed explanation of this situation. I was hoping that you would respond, and you did! I don't think he will make changes since nobody from global raised this issue until now, and because it's related to local language only! But anyway, it was nice seeing you reaching to theymos regarding this!


It’s not about making it short, it’s already short! I can only fit around four-five words. I just want to post a title like we do normally in English, for example the title of this topic. I’m not asking for a massive title space. What’s normal sized in English appears tiny in Bangla!

I am aware of the consequences of changing the code! Anyway, it was just a humble request! 

It's a whole thing this...

There's an 80-character limit in the markup:


(This limit is, I think, enforced in most browsers as a limit in terms of UTF-16 code units.)

Then there's some PHP:


(This limit is enforced, roughly, in terms of ISO-8859-1 string length after accounting for out-of-encoding characters being represented as entities.)

Then there's (as FatFork pointed out) a limit which comes from the database schema:


(I'm not much of a DBA, but, as I understand it, columns of type TINYTEXT can only store up to 255 bytes.)

And, even if the previous three hurdles were cleared, there's a SUBSTRING('$msgOptions[subject]', 1, 255) that happens while the post is being inserted into the database.

Anyway, I've sent theymos a PM, and I'll look more deeply into this issue if he responds positively.

Or make it short and on point subject. There's so many ways how to do it, you don't need to change the system just because few have problem where most don't. If this is always happens system will end up in a mess and it need resources to do it, well, good thing we have contributor developer and admin too is developer but that doesn't mean they will be available always.

The reasons in op is tangible enough to make the expansion, especially for languages other than English. But for English section of the forum, I think it is just fine. I personally don't make lengthy titles. I try as much as possible to shorten it and make it captivating. But this is not the case with many people.

I also see some newbies in the English section abusing the title space if expanded. You will be surprised that people will start explaining an idea in the title space. It could be an effect of copy and paste.
PowerGlove has a thread he entertains little things that bugs you in the forum

This limitation comes from the SMF software and I'm not sure if an admin would be willing to change this as it could probably mess up a lot of other things. The thing is that the subject line of post messages is stored in the database as a tinytext data type. This means that it is limited to a maximum of 255 bytes, which in the case of English usually means 255 characters. Problem with other languages like Bangla is that they require more bytes per character than English, so you'll hit the limit sooner.

I too have encountered similar  maximum character issues a couple of times not only when I'm making translations but also sometimes when I'm creating a new thread and the best solution I've always come up with is to shorten the title by summarising it just like tranthidung mentioned too. Sometimes switching or translating across languages can either get bulky or shorter as the case may be.

Hopefully Theymos sees to this and increases the limit if it's something the forum can do independent from SMF but I doubt so because I think there would always be a shorter version every single time.

I hoping he would see my post and reply with with an explanation whether it's really possible or not! Anyway, I'll try to ping him regarding this later!

AFAIK, Bangla, Arabic, Russian and similar languages takes more space than others!

---

If I am the OP, it wouldn't matter what I write in the title. But since I am making a translation, I try to keep the translation as identical as possible to the real one!

You can use the top part of your post for the complete title that want while use only a summarized title on the top part. Most of us here use search function for finding specific topic while only few manually browsing topics as per title.

The search function will detect the keywords that you put on the body of your thread.


This is the only problem there’s no way shorten a translated language if the counter part is really a long word. I do feel your hardship on your translated thread in our local board. 

The obvious solution is to shorten your text, besides this, I wonder how possible it is to make the subject box accept more text.

I also think one of the reasons why the subject box has text limits is due to one fact that if there weren't any limitations, individuals will post longer topics that has already done enough to explain what the content of the post is talking about. There will be no reason to read through much post with long subjects because it may have already been explanatory, thus causing shallow replies and empty meaningless words.

You can try to ping PowerGlove for his investigation on this.

Topic title RTL weirdness (SMF patch). I guess it is issue for Arabic, Hebrew and maybe similar languages. Maybe it is something else, than only subject length limitation.

Actually one of our struggles too as part of the translators because some of them words of the subject is equivalent with extended number of words or letters so to make it more still acceptable with the limit. I guess still it's a good help. Well even the main objective of the subject is just the brief idea.

First of all, Thank you for creating this thread.
I faced this issue countless times for years but never thought I would look for a solution. I just accepted how it was and tried to adjust. I have dozens of Tutorials/Translation posts where I couldn't write the thread title. I first encountered this issue about two years ago when I first translated a topic of GazetaBitcoin. Then, I noticed the same issue in another Language. That is Russian. Ratimov also translated a topic of GazetaBitcoin, which he wasn't able to post in a single post. He had to reserve a post first to post it in two parts. But his topics are not in the forum anymore since he deleted all of them.

Anyways, A humble request to theymos, If you can lift the limit, please do it.

Surely a limitation of SMF.

It could be the case. They can answer it better!


And the most funny thing is that, I can't even post the shorted version witch you just provided!
This is as far I could fit in the subject box without crossing the limit, "কাস্টমাইজড বিটকয়েন এড্রেস (ভ্যানিটিজেন)".

It can be a limitation from SMF forum software, I don't know, but it can be a limitation set up by Bitcoin Forum's admins too.

This long topic title, in my opinion, can be shortened like this.
Shortened to "[Guide] How to create your customized Bitcoin-Address (vanitygen)", or "[Guide] How to create your Bitcoin Vanitygen Address".

Additionally, theymos has his guide for Topic title.

• Bitcointalk posting etiquette.
• Topic title style guide
• Make you.r topic title, posts more attractive

I'm entirely not sure whether it's possible in SMF, but I would like to request theymos and PowerGlove (those with the power) to increase the character limit/size for the subject box. I am aware, for post body it is limited to 65535 bytes / 64k character, however I don't know what's the limit for the post's subject/title.

For English, it isn't a big deal, but for other languages like Bangla, it becomes challenging to fit the complete title in the subject box. My language and some other language takes more character space than English!

I recently translated a topic with the title: [Guide] How to create your customized Bitcoin-Address (vanitygen) – step by step .

As you can see, it's a long title. But when I translate it into Bangla and try to use it as the title, half of it gets cut off and shows random texts. This forces me to shorten the title by removing certain parts.

The original title was supposed to be "[গাইড] কিভাবে কাস্টমাইজড বিটকয়েন এড্রেস তৈরি করবেন (ভ্যানিটিজেন) -  স্টেপ বাই স্টেপ".
But I was forced to make it shorter to "কাস্টমাইজড বিটকয়েন এড্রেস (ভ্যানিটিজেন)".

Test it in the archive section yourself!

"Please ignore any messy texts and broken terms!"