Proposal: Require containers to support minimum length for Activity Template title

[Evan Gilbert]

We need to specify a minimum length of Activity Stream title that containers are required to support so that titles don't get truncated.

Proposal is 160 non-markup characters, based on an unscientific example taking 106 characters:
"Neil Patrick Harris has dedicated a song to David Hasselhof: Perfect Blue Buildings by the Counting Crows."
(and also because this fits in SMS)

A general design philosophy is to be flexible where possible, so the proposal is also to allow containers to support more characters in activity templates if they want to, and have a way for the container to specify the maximum length supported. Once we have a way to query for container-specific variables (see next proposal), we should add this "max activity length" as a container parameter.

[Robert Evans]

Not the 140 char limit like twitter?

[Evan Gilbert]

I don't have a strong opinion between 140/160. Anyone else have opnions?

[Kevin Brown]

140 is generally a good limit for anything that might need to go over SMS, since many carriers in north america (notably Sprint, though they may have raised this recently) have a limit around there; the same is generally true in european and asian countries, though the asian ones tend to be a slightly different problem because most carriers use proprietary 16 bit encodings but still have arbitrarily low limits on message sizes. Most carriers today actually have reasonably high SMS sizes since they route SMS the same way that they route MMS, which needs fairly large payload sizes anyway. Carriers don't even seem to care anymore since they're putting all their efforts into CSP, so I doubt this situation will change much in the near future.

If it's not likely to ever be used in mobile contexts, it probably doesn't matter at all. Both 140 an 160 are probably far too big to be practical for "titles". This is a 140 character long title:

"Proposal: Use a really long title that will clutter the UI, resulting in most containers truncating or wrapping, both of which are very ugly"

Wouldn't the cleaner solution be to just have the container expose what the minimum supported length is, rather than forcing it to be some arbitrary value? It's also impractical to use a single character value when dealing with multiple languages. Mandating that CJK-based sites support a 140 character minimum title is probably not reasonable.

[Zhen Wang]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 1:41 AM, Kevin Brown <et...@google.com> wrote:
> 140 is generally a good limit for anything that might need to go over SMS,
> since many carriers in north america (notably Sprint, though they may have
> raised this recently) have a limit around there; the same is generally true
> in european and asian countries, though the asian ones tend to be a slightly
> different problem because most carriers use proprietary 16 bit encodings but
> still have arbitrarily low limits on message sizes. Most carriers today
> actually have reasonably high SMS sizes since they route SMS the same way
> that they route MMS, which needs fairly large payload sizes anyway. Carriers
> don't even seem to care anymore since they're putting all their efforts into
> CSP, so I doubt this situation will change much in the near future.
>
> If it's not likely to ever be used in mobile contexts, it probably doesn't
> matter at all. Both 140 an 160 are probably far too big to be practical for
> "titles". This is a 140 character long title:
>
> "Proposal: Use a really long title that will clutter the UI, resulting in
> most containers truncating or wrapping, both of which are very ugly"
>
> Wouldn't the cleaner solution be to just have the container expose what the
> minimum supported length is, rather than forcing it to be some arbitrary
> value? It's also impractical to use a single character value when dealing
> with multiple languages. Mandating that CJK-based sites support a 140
> character minimum title is probably not reasonable.

+1. Or just let the container expose what the maximum length of title
is supported.

[Kevin Brown]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 12:00 PM, Zhen Wang <wa...@google.com> wrote:

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 1:41 AM, Kevin Brown <et...@google.com> wrote:
> 140 is generally a good limit for anything that might need to go over SMS,
> since many carriers in north america (notably Sprint, though they may have
> raised this recently) have a limit around there; the same is generally true
> in european and asian countries, though the asian ones tend to be a slightly
> different problem because most carriers use proprietary 16 bit encodings but
> still have arbitrarily low limits on message sizes. Most carriers today
> actually have reasonably high SMS sizes since they route SMS the same way
> that they route MMS, which needs fairly large payload sizes anyway. Carriers
> don't even seem to care anymore since they're putting all their efforts into
> CSP, so I doubt this situation will change much in the near future.
>
> If it's not likely to ever be used in mobile contexts, it probably doesn't
> matter at all. Both 140 an 160 are probably far too big to be practical for
> "titles". This is a 140 character long title:
>
> "Proposal: Use a really long title that will clutter the UI, resulting in
> most containers truncating or wrapping, both of which are very ugly"
>
> Wouldn't the cleaner solution be to just have the container expose what the
> minimum supported length is, rather than forcing it to be some arbitrary
> value? It's also impractical to use a single character value when dealing
> with multiple languages. Mandating that CJK-based sites support a 140
> character minimum title is probably not reasonable.

+1. Or just let the container expose what the maximum length of title
is supported.

Er, yeah, that's what I meant (s/minimum/maximum/)
 

>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 1:16 AM, Evan Gilbert <uid...@google.com> wrote:
> > I don't have a strong opinion between 140/160. Anyone else have opnions?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 3:05 PM, Robert Evans <bobe...@google.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Not the 140 char limit like twitter?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 12:16 PM, Evan Gilbert <uid...@google.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > > We need to specify a minimum length of Activity Stream title that
> containers are required to support so that titles don't get truncated.
> > > >
> > > > Proposal is 160 non-markup characters, based on an unscientific
> example taking 106 characters:
> > > > "Neil Patrick Harris has dedicated a song to David Hasselhof: Perfect
> Blue Buildings by the Counting Crows."
> > > > (and also because this fits in SMS)
> > > >
> > > > A general design philosophy is to be flexible where possible, so the
> proposal is also to allow containers to support more characters in activity
> templates if they want to, and have a way for the container to specify the
> maximum length supported. Once we have a way to query for container-specific
> variables (see next proposal), we should add this "max activity length" as a
> container parameter.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>  >
>

--
~Kevin

[Evan Gilbert]

We should have a minimum length requirement to support the activity stream feature. It's too much work to change the message that you send based on what container you're in, especially when you factor in templates, message bundles, and I18N.

Evan

[Zhen Wang]

Why don't we let the container decide how to truncate a title if it's too long?

[Kevin Brown]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 8:29 PM, Evan Gilbert <uid...@google.com> wrote:

We should have a minimum length requirement to support the activity stream feature. It's too much work to change the message that you send based on what container you're in, especially when you factor in templates, message bundles, and I18N.

I'll agree with that premise, but it really doesn't make sense to base that "minimum" length on the lowest common denominator of SMS messages in the US. What if my title is 140 chinese or japanese characters? That'd be valid according to the spec, but it'd fail on the vast majority of SMS systems out there, US or not. It would also look ridiculous on screen since it would span the entire width of most large monitors. Why would a container not be allowed to truncate such an unreasonably long title?

I see nothing wrong with suggesting a minimum length that is language and region appropriate, but ultimately this seems like something that containers really have to decide for themselves based on their actual requirements.

[Marco Ensing]

+1 on 140 charactes.

On Apr 24, 9:31 pm, "Kevin Brown" <e...@google.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 8:29 PM, Evan Gilbert <uid...@google.com> wrote:
> > We should have a minimum length requirement to support the activity stream
> > feature. It's too much work to change the message that you send based on
> > what container you're in, especially when you factor in templates, message
> > bundles, and I18N.
>
> I'll agree with that premise, but it really doesn't make sense to base that
> "minimum" length on the lowest common denominator of SMS messages in the US.
> What if my title is 140 chinese or japanese characters? That'd be valid
> according to the spec, but it'd fail on the vast majority of SMS systems out
> there, US or not. It would also look ridiculous on screen since it would
> span the entire width of most large monitors. Why would a container not be
> allowed to truncate such an unreasonably long title?
>
> I see nothing wrong with suggesting a minimum length that is language and
> region appropriate, but ultimately this seems like something that containers
> really have to decide for themselves based on their actual requirements.
>
>
>
>
>
> > Evan
>

> > On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 1:03 PM, Kevin Brown <e...@google.com> wrote:
>
> >> On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 12:00 PM, Zhen Wang <wa...@google.com> wrote:
>

> >>> > > On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 3:05 PM, Robert Evans <bobev...@google.com>

> >>> wrote:
>
> >>> > > > Not the 140 char limit like twitter?
>
> >>> > > > On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 12:16 PM, Evan Gilbert <uid...@google.com>
> >>> > wrote:
>
> >>> > > > > We need to specify a minimum length of Activity Stream title that
> >>> > containers are required to support so that titles don't get truncated.
>
> >>> > > > > Proposal is 160 non-markup characters, based on an unscientific
> >>> > example taking 106 characters:
> >>> > > > > "Neil Patrick Harris has dedicated a song to David Hasselhof:
> >>> Perfect
> >>> > Blue Buildings by the Counting Crows."
> >>> > > > > (and also because this fits in SMS)
>
> >>> > > > > A general design philosophy is to be flexible where possible, so
> >>> the
> >>> > proposal is also to allow containers to support more characters in
> >>> activity
> >>> > templates if they want to, and have a way for the container to specify
> >>> the
> >>> > maximum length supported. Once we have a way to query for
> >>> container-specific
> >>> > variables (see next proposal), we should add this "max activity length"
> >>> as a
> >>> > container parameter.
>
> >> --

> >> ~Kevin- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Paul]

-1

I understand the point, but I just feel it's making too many
assumptions about activities and their use at this juncture.

~Paul

[Cassie]

This thread is not getting enough positive approval or consensus for 0.8. I am closing this thread for now but we should revisit this issue for 0.9.
Thanks!

- Cassie