what am i doing wrong, re: subject line too short?

[mytocles]

if you look at the trading forum, you can see lots of subject lines longer than mine (my "Fry's and Jade Empire" post).  when i type it, i see plenty of space left, and it all appears on the preview, but then part is missing on the actual post...  :?:

[warning]

You weren't supposed to notice!  Everyone quickly find a new hiding spot!

Actually there is a limit to how many characters can be in a subject.  I'm not sure what we have ours set at but I do know that this forum software supports longer subjects because I've seen longer subjects at other forums.  Like this one at QT3.  I'm not sure if we are able to increase the amount of characters here but I've run into the limit before as well.

[mytocles]

there's apparently no limit on how many "characters" can be in this forum though, LOL!

seriously, folks - ta-dum-dum... my post subject ended up with 49 characters after i submited it - even though it had been longer in the preview, and even though i had plenty of space in the subject line while in the "post a reply" screen.

after you answered, i went to the Trading Forum and picked a longer one, at random - and it's 60 characters...it's not easy to count them, so i could be off by one or two, but probably not by eleven. check it out - at the Trading Forum, my post is:

"R U in a Fry's state? want to trade a Jade Empire" (49-ish characters) - oh, now this is truly bizarre - when i first posted it, the "e" on the end of Empire wasn't showing, since then, someone answered it and i answered back, now it has an "e" on it!  i remember looking at that "Empir" over and over, wondering what happened...

anyway, bluntman72's - 18 posts down, right now, from mine - is:
"Selling Game Cube 16 games 2 wavebirds 2 regular controllers" (60-ish characters)

my original subject line that i typed in, ended with: "... want to trade a Jade Empire for:" - and that all showed up in the preview too.  unless, of course i'm losing my mind, oh that's right, that's already gone, i forgot.  no, this time i really do remember seeing more in the preview line than appeared on the final subject line, i swear!

any ideas? anyone else ever notice it?

oh, and by the way, just so you'll be convinced i'm pixilated (in the old sense, not pixelated!) - this is not the first time it's happened, either.

[AgtFox]

I added the "e", just so you don't go crazy.  I have yet to find anything that limits the title.  Only thing I can think of is that you had quotes in yours and that may add up to something in the code...I really don't know.

[mytocles]

thanks, AgtFox - although it may be too late on the "don't go crazy" part :roll:        :lol:  i'll have to try thinking of the subject line as a title on eBay, and not be so "literary" - "darn", "there i go again!"

[Gedd]

I don't know what the original subject was, but in phpBB terms, quotes are worth 6 characters (") and ampersands would be worth 5 (&).  This is because for some odd reason phpBB translates the title to HTML code and *then* counts the characters against the limit instead of doing it the other way around (which would make sense).

That's why you'll sometimes see post titles like:

She told me she wanted to be "friends"

translated into:

She told me she wanted to be "friends&quo

[AgtFox]

woo...I was right about the quotes.  He had quotes around "Fry's", maybe something else...don't remember.

[mytocles]

so, that answers that question - and why it only happened sometimes.  thanks a lot, folks - another mystery solved... :lol: