164115 - Disable Threading by Subject

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Jerry Baker]

NN4 has the ability to turn off threading by subject. Sometimes I want to see
"true" threads (threads built from References: or In-Reply-To: headers) only.

Comment 1

[Holger Metzger]

*** Bug 18789 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Holger Metzger]

This setting, threading by references, should be default in MailNews. It's very
confusing to have posts with same subjects threaded together.

Comment 3

[Stanimir Stamenkov]

I agree with Holger and everyone who thinks this should be that way.

Comment 4

[Mark Knipfer]

I hope this user_pref setting gets fixed/corrected soon.  This is probably one
of the user_pref settings that is still preventing me (and many others that I
know about) from switching from Netscape Communicator 4.7x-4.8 to Mozilla 1.1 or
Netscape 7.  I rely on this user_pref setting in Netscape Communicator 4.8
Messenger and threading like subjects makes it horrible to follow users messages.

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

Netscape 4.x disabled threading by subject with a global pref,
"mail.thread_without_re", that you had to put in prefs.js by hand, iirc. Here's
a patch that does that.  It won't be the default, however, because too many
users complained when it was the default (and hardly anyone complains that it's
not the default)

Comment 6

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: add hidden pref for this

Comment 7

[Mark Knipfer]

When will this bug get fixed in Mozilla?

I hate trying to search through messages where the users send e-mails with exact
subjects.  This is a very annoying bug in Mozilla.

Comment 8

[Boris 'pi' Piwinger]

Is this here about threading messages without Re: with or without common references?

pi

Comment 9

[Holger Metzger]

It's about Mozilla's way of putting messages with the same subject in the same
thread even if the messages do not belong together. Netscape 4.x could be
configured to thread postings strictly according to references, while Mozilla
seems to thread according to message subjects first and then - AFAIK -  references.

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

the patch in this bug makes it a hidden pref to turn threading by subject off
entirely (for newly downloaded messages) - if I can get it reviewed, I can check
it in.

Comment 11

[Thomas Swan]

Even my IMAP server supports threading by reference or by ordered subject.  And,
after upgrading I had hoped it would fix the "problem" with Mozilla still
sorting by ordered subject.  I didn't realize this was always the case.

I know this won't make it in before 1.4 even though the patch has been here for
sometime. 

Even a formal preference for it such as "Thread by Reference" or "Thread by
Subject" would be wonderful.

Comment 12

[Thomas Swan]

Sorry for the excess spamming; but, I wanted to apologize for the apparent tone
of the last post.  Let me rephrase the comment to a more constructive statement.

There is a patch in hand.  Time permitting, can this be reviewed and hopefully
checked in.  

..I would really love to be able to do sorting by references only, even if some
other *cough* mail clients might mess it up... 

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

I was getting set to get this reviewed and checked in, and I ran into a problem
undoing message deletion when this pref was turned on. So I needed to find some
time to fix that problem as well, but at that point, I realized it wasn't going
to get into 1.4. I apologize, and will try to get it into 1.5 as early as I can.

Comment 14

[Thomas Swan]

I'm confused as to how this would interact with undoing message deletion... if
you have any ideas on what might be happening, I could try and do some leg work
on tracking it down... 

Comment 15

[David :Bienvenu]

the problem was more that undo can result in a message getting added that was
the original thread parent, if you delete the first message in a thread. It
turns out that if we don't do threading by subject, this message won't get
threaded correctly. I need to write some code that makes it so we'll thread
correctly in such a case.

Comment 16

[Karsten Düsterloh]

*** Bug 197173 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[David :Bienvenu]

I have checked in support for this pref, btw, so you can try it out.

user_pref("mail.thread_without_re", false)

Comment 18

[Jack Eidsness]

Is this supposed to be in 1.5b?  I am using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0;
en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030827, and in MailNews, every set of messages with the
subject "test", "re: your mail", or with no subject is in only one thread each,
regardless of references.

I do have mail.thread_without_re both set to "false"

Comment 19

[Jerry Baker]

The patch only works in mail. It does not work in news. Hopefully it will sometime.

Comment 20

[David :Bienvenu]

Jack, were you talking about news? I'll look to see why news doesn't work...

Comment 21

[Jerry Baker]

I don't know if it should be a different bug or not, but I think what most
people really want is not to thread any messages that are not specifically
linked via a "references" or "In-Reply-To" headers. As it is, even with this
patch, messages with the subjects "foo" and "Re: foo" will be threaded even
without any such headers.

That might seem like a logical thing to do, but when you get a lot of mail, or
news posts, with the same subject, it gets really old. For example, I get tons
of mail that says "Help" for the subject. When I reply Mozilla adds "Re: Help".
Now, all replies to my replies get threaded under one message regardless of what
thread they "belong" in.

Comment 22

[Jack Eidsness]

I spoke too soon!  It actually does work, but I had to delete my .msf files in
the ImapMail directories to unthread my old messages.  That doesn't sound like
much to ask, so I am satisfied.  I haven't tried it with News.

Comment 23

[David :Bienvenu]

sorry, yes, I should have mentioned that. You do need to delete the .msf files
because the thread information is stored there.

Comment 24

[Mark Knipfer]

I downloaded Mozilla 1.5b nightly build and this works great.  Although you have
to delete the *.msf files, its worth it.

Comment 25

[James Nord]

*** Bug 223198 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 26

[Holger Mauermann]

This does not work if the reply arrives the mailbox before the original message
(the "Order received" column value of the reply is smaller than that from the
replied message). This could really happen if the messages are delayed from
different mail servers, or even if you copy/move messages between folders.

Comment 27

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 223760 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 28

[Nicolas Bouillon]

On Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fr-FR; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031020 Debian/1.5-1
I have enabled in about:config => mail.thread_without_re = "false"
I have removed the msf files.

Threading seem to be some confused. On some boxes, it works fine. On other, it
thread as before, based on the subject. On other one, the message are righly
threaded, but not completly sorted by thread date (some message from year 2002
are in other from 2003), and my newest mail is display just before the oldest
one, at the start of the list...
That make the new (like the old...) sort threading unusable...

Moreover, if i have two message with the same message as reference (for example
2 people reply to the same mail, and include me as CC), and if i have not the
referenced mail, they get threaded together, based on time. I thinks that
expected result is to get two differents threads.

The sort by thread from KMail can be a good example of what to do (i have never
been surprised by its behaviour).

Comment 29

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 226671 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 30

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

*** Bug 231764 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 31

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

*** Bug 182688 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 32

[Stewart Gordon]

*** Bug 224355 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 33

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 223931 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 34

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 246059 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 35

[Matthias Bockelkamp]

Should mail.thread_without_re=false be the default behaviour and the pref
removed, now that message grouping is available? Else grouping by subject is the
same as the threaded view.

Comment 36

[Vladimir Kondratyev]

Is any chance to get it fixed in 1.0? Personally for me Thunderbird is not
usable at all without proper e-mail groupping.

Comment 37

[David :Bienvenu]

No, subject grouping doesn't thread within the group - they're not equivalent at
all. 

Lots more people complained when we made "mail.thread_without_re" default to
false, so we're not going to do that.

Comment 38

[D.Schenkewitz]

"mail.thread_without_re=false" is not doing the right thing anyway. What we 
(most of us, I believe) want is "mail.thread_by_in_reply_to=true" and/or "mail.
thread_by_reference=true" :-)

Btw, Thunderbird 0.9 for linux seems to ignore "mail.thread_without_re". 

I put 'user_pref("mail.thread_without_re", true);' into my prefs.js under my ".
thunderbird//default/5c5o77bp.slt/". I know that exactly this file is used and 
the option is somehow recognized, because that line is always re-placed before 
'user_pref("mail.startup.enabledMailCheckOnce", true);' if I put it somewhere 
else and if I use "true" instead of "false", that line is completely removed 
(because it is the default, I guess). 
I also tried "mailnews" instead of "mail". 
But when I click on "Date" (removes threading) and then click "View" -> "Sort 
by" -> "Threaded", it puts all messages with the subjects "Test", "Test" and 
"Re: Test" into one thread. I expected to get two threads of "Test" where one 
contains "Re: Test". 

Btw. how can Mozilla/FF decide where to put the "Re: Test" if it does not look 
at the "References" and/or "in_reply_to" headers?

Comment 39

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Comment on attachment 97528 [details] [diff] [review]
add hidden pref for this

The code that this patch would apply to has changed significantly enough that the patch can't possibly apply, let alone do what it was originally intended to do.

Comment 40

[Chris Hills]

Could we please have a similar patch for usenet as well as e-mail messages.

Comment 41

[David :Bienvenu]

the pref works for news as well, iirc. You just need to rebuild the index, using the properties dialog on the newsgroup (or remove the .msf file directly)