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Topic: topic titles are truncated if longer than 71 chars (Read 7538 times) previous topic - next topic
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topic titles are truncated if longer than 71 chars

Topic titles seem to be shortened to 71 chars which could make it difficult to understand the topic's starter concern.

Examples

16- or 32-bit (if source files have been 16-bit, but edited files 32-bit)? has become 16- or 32-bit (if source files have been 16-bit, but edited files 32-b

Getting properties of source files if playing lossless compressed formats has become Getting properties of source files if playing lossless compressed form.

I think it would be advantageously if the topic's input template wouldn't accept titles longer than 71 chars (which it does) or if the topic's preview could include the topic's title so that it can be modified before posting.
This is HA. Not the Jerry Springer Show.

topic titles are truncated if longer than 71 chars

Reply #1 –
I second this, I was caught out and my post has a meaningless title which I can't correct.

topic titles are truncated if longer than 71 chars

Reply #2 –
I cannot speak for whether or not IP.Board will allow this, so I leave that to an admin.

However, I can say two things:
(1) Beware that characters that must be escaped within HTML will correspondingly consume more than one of the 70 characters. This includes typewriter-style quotation-marks, the ampersand, and so on.
(2) At the other extreme, many members take nowhere near full advantage of the 70 characters that they do have! I find the surplus of insufficiently descriptive titles to be more worthy of concern than the possibility that people will run out of space. The exception are titles that, as per the above, are confounded by many escaped characters therein.

Personally, I find it trivial to use a character-counter and non-escaped characters (such as proper quotation-marks) to ensure that titles will fit within the current limit. Note that I almost exclusively have to do this because of point (2), not for my own reasons.

I will sort the three mentioned threads as best as I can. Remember that you can use the reporting system to request amendments and so forth, rather than having to suffer in silence.

topic titles are truncated if longer than 71 chars

Reply #3 –
Quote from: db1989 on
Remember that you can use the reporting system to request amendments and so forth, rather than having to suffer in silence.
This is the most correct answer. We're here to help!  The character restriction is there to keep people from writing novels. It's arbitrary, sure, but if you can't sum your topic up in under 70 characters... well... you might just be an academic.

topic titles are truncated if longer than 71 chars

Reply #4 –
Perhaps it should be added that you can also make use of the Topic Description field in cases where 70 characters aren't enough. Please note that this thread is four years old now.

Quote from: db1989 on
I cannot speak for whether or not IP.Board will allow this,

At least Personal messages with a too long title aren't sent and the board notifies you about the reason for the rejection.
This is HA. Not the Jerry Springer Show.

topic titles are truncated if longer than 71 chars

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Robertina on
Perhaps it should be added that you can also make use of the Topic Description field in cases where 70 characters aren't enough.
Of course. A hundred and forty characters in total should be more than enough for most cases!

And you just reminded me that the box for entering the description/subtitle physically does not let the user type beyond 70 characters, something that is missing in the main title and an inconsistency I’ve noted before. If that were present in the first box, too, this problem would be moot, aside from the issue with escaped characters.

Quote
Please note that this thread is four years old now.
Heh, I didn’t even notice. I guess this is one occasion where necrobumping is pretty OK.