Threading foul-ups?

I believe it's google's broken groups interface that causes the trouble. I don't use it myself, but apparently you can use the old interface that is horrible and clunky and gets the threading right, or the new interface that is nice and smooth and buggers up the threading for anyone using a real newsreader. Google is surprisingly good at following their "do no evil" motto, considering the size and power of the company, but they've definitely broken it with their newsgroup client.

I don't think it is going to be possible to persuade Google posters to change their habits (though it is worth a try on occasion). If anyone knows of a way to get a newsreader (I use Thunderbird, but am willing to try something else) to work around this google bug, I'd like to know.

The presentation in the old Google interface doesn't appear to have broken linking, so I would assume that it is possible for a suitably capable newsreader to keep the threads. I haven't tried the 'new' interface.

Newsreaders have no problem with the old Google interface - posts using that have correct threading references, and usually also have context quotations. It is only the new interface that's a problem.

Is this new interface also the reason why there have been a influx of postings with lines greater than 80 characters across various newsgroups recently ? (eg: each paragraph on one very long line)

Simon.

Not sure - I use the old one (don't even remember why I rejected the new one after a few minutes). But the old one will break lines more than I want to in an absolutely impredictable manner (not sure what's wrong with my spelling of "impredictable", I get it underlined in firefox at the moment and I thought I knew that...:-) ). Generally I keep my lines significantly shorter than the quoted ones (which googlegroups prepares at the "reply" button) and almost every time I end up with lots of line breaks forced on me where I did not intend them :-).

Dimiter

It's always nice to find questions I can answer - it's "unpredictable".

Thunderbird wraps lines as needed to make them readable, and it has a "rewrap" shortcut when replying, so I barely notice when there are long lines. It's only if the re-wrap messes up formatting that it's a problem.

Ah, that may be the case! The posts that I chased down all have two things in common: the absence of any "References" headers (which is probably what is directly responsible for the observed behavior) and Reply-To header of " snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com".

But, I haven't checked to see if *all* posts with that Reply-To exhibit the same problem (I suspect a thread *started* as such would have nothing to "break off of"...)

No idea. I don't use anything "google" besides search. From the reply-to (above), should I assume it is kludged onto their

I also see it with "Open-Source SCPI / IEEE 488.2 Parser" thread (*two* breaks). I haven't checked much beyond that (I routinely "kill" threads to keep things uncluttered, here)

Does it, perhaps, use subject line matching to determine threading?

Ditto. I was also going to wonder if there was some regional English variant I was unaware of which caused it to be written differently than in British English.

I use slrn which doesn't wrap by default, so the increase in the number of messages with long line lengths has become very obvious.

Simon.

I've always been fascinated by inflammable, irregardless, etc. and the ignorance surrounding them (as well as how frequently people mispronounce "salmon" et al.)

I *was* amused to discover that the British *spelling* of Al agrees with their pronunciation of same (which differs from the American version).

BTW, many things that I have read suggest that American English is closer to "old" English than what the Brits speak nowadays. I.e. it has "changed less" (?).

I must have learned it from the wrong source, I guess :-). I really thought I knew it, LOL. English is not my native language but I have been using it a lot for decades now and got so used to it that I suppose I have grown somewhat overconfident, just by habit. Now that English football is so popular on telly all over the planet and I have begun even to understand _parts_ of what Alex Ferguson and Kenny Dalglish have to say in their post-match interviews I must have gathered even more overconfidence :D. (BTW, anyone in England who can understand _all_ of what these guys say? I do understand lots of other Scots, e.g. Moyes, McLeish etc., but _not_ these two ones).

Dimiter

It seems that it does

Irregardless isn't a real word. It's a mix-up of irrespective and regardless.

That was the point of my comment!

Note that "inflammable" *is* a word -- yet "flammable" is used in its stead... because people can't grasp that "in" does not mean "not" in this context.

You are suffering from a "pint deficiency"! :> Toss a few more back and *everything* becomes remarkably clear (except, of course, your own speech and vision!)

Hah, Don, that's undeniably correct! I'll act on it tomorrow or the day after, though, need to do some work until then :D.

Dimiter

"inflammable" is interesting because it means exactly the same as "flammable". "irregardless" is less interesting, because there is no such word.

One of my favourites is "gormless" - you can be gormless, but you can't be "gormful" - in fact, there is no such thing as "gorm". It only exists as something some people haven't got.

American /spelling/ is closer to "old" English. At the time when the ex-British colonies went off in a huff about some spilt tea, spelling in English was /reasonably/ consistent, but not strongly fixed. British high society went through a period of "French is posh" again, so the upper class adopted some French language influence into their spelling of English - typically that meant extra vowels were added for no other reason than because "colour" looked more upper-class than "color". These changes fell gradually from the upper class society down to the plebs, and were set in stone (or at least in the OED). In the meantime, the Americans were a bit more practical and fixed their spellings based on common usage.

/Spoken/ English is a different matter - there were (and still are) lots of dialects and variants around the UK and Ireland, and people took those to the other side of the pond when they emigrated. There they mixed with each other and people with other languages, and developed their own dialects. So spoken English in the USA is not any "older" than English in the UK - it's just different evolved dialects.