[inforoots] Bold and not bold

[Dave Crocker]

David Pinto wrote:
> The reason the subject line changes from bold face to light face is 
> somehow buried somewhere in the computer program. Fine, but my question 
> is how this idea was developed. Someone thought of this angle. Why? This 
> does not seem like the sort of idea that most of us would have. And 
> also, is there a purpose to this beyond the obvious one?


David,

Ultimately, each of these email features became popular through 
experimentation, which means less theory and more accident.  This particular 
one, in this particular form, is pretty old, but I do not remember when it 
came into being.  (More on the underlying function later.) I'll guess the 
font-changing feature came into use in the late 1980s, when PCs became 
prevalent and email user (client) software that could finally start enjoying 
fonts. I think that Eudora had it, but am not positive.

There were such font-based email programs earlier, albeit semi-mainframe 
based, in various research centers.  So the odds are high that there was a 
visual feature like this tried at MIT, CMU, or the like, in the early 80s or 
even 70s. It's just that I do not recall hearing about them then.

Note that early (and continuing) versions of this bold/unbold mechanism do not 
get invoked only by "opening" the message.  It is common for the unbolding to 
happen automatically, after a message is displayed in the preview window for a 
user settable amount of time.

Now, as to the underlying feature.  The usual label for this bit of 
information is "unseen".  It is enormously helpful for a user to be able to 
review a scan listing of a large folder and see which messages have not yet 
been seen by them.  As I recall this flag dates back to some of the earliest 
Arpanet email client programs.  I think that MSG had it and I am sure that 
BBN's Hermes had it.  Circa 1975.

Equally helpful is "recent" which is typically defined as having arrived 
either "since the last retrieval from the server" or "since I started the client".

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net