Comment 6 for bug 5395

I ran into this today when attempting to have a perfectly innocent discussion about some code. My mail happened to contain the following text (I'm posting this through the web interface to avoid the same problem happening here):

        status = efi_call_phys4(efi_phys.set_virtual_address_map,
                                memory_map_size, descriptor_size,
                                descriptor_version, virtual_map);

Launchpad thought that 'status' was a verb directed at it, and decided that it would reject my whole mail because it misunderstood it. This is of course rather frustrating!

I've always found the Debian BTS much better designed for e-mail handling; it's written by and for people who use e-mail for manipulating bugs every day. We discussed the debbugs syntax when Launchpad's syntax was being designed, so the designers were not unaware of it. I realise Launchpad's syntax needed some modifications to cope with multiple tasks on bugs, but to be honest I've always felt that many of the other changes were rather gratuitous. I suppose a redesign would be painful now but it might be better in the long run.