18343 - Newsgroups in folder pane shouldn't be sorted

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect, P3)

Description

[Phil Peterson]

Looks like we're sorting the list of newsgroups in the folder pane. If possible,
it would be better not to do that. Users should be able to control the order of
newsgroups, preferably using drag/drop, but failing that, by reordering lines in
the newsrc file. Of course, mail folders should continue to be sorted :-)

Comment 1

[Alec Flett]

this may be tricky. I'm thinking we add [yet] another attribute to the folder,
isSorted, and then have the news folders return false.... if they're not sorted,
then when we we get asked for the ?Sort=yes or whatever the attribute is, whe
call GetSubfolders and look up the index of that folder... of course this makes
the sort N^2Log(N) instead of Log(N) :(

unless we provide another attribute on the folder, naturalOrder.

In any case, it's up to seth to determine the order returned by GetSubFolders()

Comment 2

[scottputterman]

yeah, we need to do something like this.  I was thinking of either doing the
isSorted or making the folder give its sort string somehow.  Perhaps, the
newsfolder can keep track of its index in its parent and just return that.
Newsgroups probably don't get added often enough to make renumbering that big of
a deal.

Comment 3

[scottputterman]

moving to future milestone.

Comment 4

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

This is an extremely common request

Comment 5

[scottputterman]

reassigning to sspitzer

Comment 6

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Why must mail folders remain sorted? A lot of folks are asking for the ability 
to re-order those, too. Case in point: in order to get my low-traffic filter 
catchbasin folders out of the way and bring important ones to the top I've had 
to resort to giving bogus names rather than the names I'd otherwise prefer 
('zzspam' for example). Kind of like "AAABACO plumbing" in the yellow pages.

Comment 7

[Håkan Waara]

Would this be a matter of editing back-end or front-end code?  If the latter,
then we might be able to fix it on the branch.

Comment 8

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I did some clean up, and I've got this fixed wrapped up in with it.

basically, I moved the code that generates a sort order value into the 
nsIMsgFolder interface and move the implementation out of the datasource and 
into the nsMsgFolder.cpp

news (nsNewsFolder.cpp) overrides it and uses the order from the newsrc file.

the base class still uses the folder flags to determine the order.

patch on the way.

Comment 9

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Attachment: attachment, includes some clean up and the fix for #95358 and #96499

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

sr=bienvenu

Comment 11

[racham]

r=bhuvan

Comment 12

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

a=asa on behalf of [e-mail]

Comment 13

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

fixed.  it only took me a few years.

Comment 14

[Peter Lairo]

1. Ok, so how does one resort the newsgroups now (asking as a common user)? I
tried dragging, but no-go (build 2001-08-23).

2. Is it possible to go back to a alphanumeric sort (without doing it manually?

3. Ideally, we should have "move up" and move down" buttons in the "Mail/News
Account Settings". Then we would also need two horizontal lines to delineate the
"mail accounts *|* local folders *|* ewsgroups", because the moving cannot
(should not) go beyond ones own subgroup (mail accounts | local folders |
newsgroups). Another bug?

Comment 15

[Stephen Charlton]

> 3. Ideally, we should have "move up" and move down" buttons in the "Mail/News
> Account Settings". Then we would also need two horizontal lines to delineate the
> "mail accounts *|* local folders *|* ewsgroups", because the moving cannot
> (should not) go beyond ones own subgroup (mail accounts | local folders |
> newsgroups). Another bug?

I'd say that's another bug, however I don't agree that the mail and newsgroups
need to be distinctly separate. e.g. Say if I have a mail account for home use
and a collection of newsgroups for personal interest, and then I have a work
email and a collection of groups for work use then I might want to do

Home Email account
Personal Newsgroups
Work Email account
Work-related Newsgroups
Local Folders

Comment 16

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Verified FIXED using the 2001-10-04 builds:

Mac OS 9.1 
Mac OS X 10.1
Windows 2000
RedHat Linux 7.1

We display the folder pane's newsgroups based on the order that the rc file has
them, which is to say, in the order that you subscribed them in.