Title of thread missing on top of the page

[skoteskote]

The title of a thread should be displayed in arial or helvetica bold and larger type the top of the thread. This is extra important as the title is not displayed in the slug (this would be a great addition as well), so a reader who has several tabs open will easily be confused.

[aerugo]

@skoteskote
This title business requires a bit of UX thinking to get right. When opening a thread in the reader that is a fork of another thread, how does the title logic work?

[aerugo]

We need to change this slightly so that the title of the entire thread is always the title of the first topic in the fork chain.

[jims]

Ah, I thought a fork would have the ability to change the title?

[skoteskote]

Hmm. Is it possible to keep the original title and add the fork title just under it? Maybe a bit cluttered.

Original title
+ Fork title

[jims]

Yeah, sure :)

[aerugo]

Hmm. Is it possible to keep the original title and add the fork title just under it? Maybe a bit cluttered.

Original title
+ Fork title

I see the value in this, but I think it adds a lot of complexity. What happens in a forked chain that is 4 levels deep? The title string becomes a short nonsensical story and very unwieldy and big. Does the title change with switching forks? If so, the next below will move up and down as the number of lines of the title adjust. If not, the story will have a title containing forks that are not being displayed.

I think there are things of higher priority. Let's just use the title of the first topic in the chain.

[jims]

That could be disorienting as well no? I would mean all forks that share the same root appear to have the same title? What’s the catch with having the title of the fork topic as the title?

…

On Thu, May 28, 2020, 15:21 Hugi ***@***.***> wrote: Hmm. Is it possible to keep the original title and add the fork title just under it? Maybe a bit cluttered. *Original title* *+ Fork title* I see the value in this, but I think it adds a lot of complexity. What happens in a forked chain that is 4 levels deep? The title string becomes a short story nonsensical story and very unwieldy and big. I think there are things of higher priority. I would suggest we just use the title of the first topic in the chain. — You are receiving this because you modified the open/close state. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#5 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAASGL5HB2ITTQOZ7ENMNNLRTZQNXANCNFSM4NJNX4UQ> .

[aerugo]

What’s the catch with having the title of the fork topic as the title?

I can see one functional reason and another more "thematic" reason:

Functional:
The functional reason is that if the title is a multi-line title, and it changes as the end fork is switched, which shifts the text. That's not a huge problem, but it's a bit ugly.

Thematic:
The catch becomes that the context for the "mother" thread is then set by the intended context for the child fork. Let me explain:

Jane starts a story about space slugs. She names it "Shiny Shiny Slime". This goes on for quite a long time and is forked in three generations. In the first fork, Lee continues the slug story with a slight twist from the main narrative, then Hugh forks that topic and changes the narrator to a person passing by in a space ship watching the slugs dance in space, that thread then continues as a space-opera for a while until Ashley forks it again into a poetic internal monologue on how Wittgenstein must have been lonely in England. This last fork is named "When Wittgenstein moved to England".

If the long multi-level thread is named "Shiny Shiny Slime" it at least makes sense when they start reading it. It then gradually shifts. If it's named "When Wittgenstein moved to England" it will feel more disorienting and perhaps like an error, and it's not until the last fork that the reason makes sense, that's probably more disorienting.

Interesting, perhaps. But disorienting.

[jims]

But, does the reader really expect to find a connection with the beginning of a novel to it's title? I don't think I do. I do think it's very important to have as many unique names as possible to, simply to be able to distinguish between the stories, which becomes a problem if we use the "fork root" title. It's very easy to make it use either so as long as we decide I'll simply change it :)