Closed Bug 23633 Opened 25 years ago Closed 15 years ago

Newsgroup names should only be truncated if there is no room for the full name

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Product:
SeaMonkey
Component:
MailNews: Message Display
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: bugzilla, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

(Keywords: helpwanted)

Attachments

(1 file)

NS4.x truncated if there is no room for the full name
70.61 KB, image/jpeg
Details 
I just subscribed to the newsgroup:
dk.test
on my newsserver (news.inet.tele.dk).

There is plenty of room to write the full newsgroup name but Mozilla insists on
calling the newsgroup:
d.test

Build 2000011008
Assignee: phil → putterman
Scott, you hooked this up, right?
QA Contact: lchiang → huang
Putterman, do we have any rules for abbreviating the newsgroup name?
I thought that no matter how short for the newsgroup name, once we set up the
account setup for displaying abbreviation names, and it will display abbreviate
names, isn't it?
it currently always abbreviates or never abbreviates depending on your pref.  I
have no plans to change this any time soon since as far as I know I have no way
of knowing about size in the tree.
marking helpwanted. and marking M20.  I'm pretty sure that I will never fix this
but am willing to advise.
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Keywords: helpwanted
Target Milestone: M20
moving to future milestone for review for a later product release
Target Milestone: M20 → Future
Suggest adding keyword 4xp since 4.x only abbreviated newsgroup names if necessary. 
i am using build 2001080110 on Windows NT and it also truncates the newsgroup name 

comp.news.networkworld.netflash is displayed as c.n.n.netflash

it seems that it just gets the first letter of each parent, add a dot and the
last word to display the newsgroup name
OS: Windows 98 → All
Hardware: PC → All
We could go a long way to reducing complaints on this issue by showing
tooltip/help text of the full name as you moused over.  And by hooking up some
UI for the pref
Blocks: 74644
I agree that the "tooltip/help text" helps, but it is a bandaid approach to a
poor design.  When you have, perhaps, dozens of newsgroups in your list it
quickly becomes very frustrating to find out what the real names are.  Turning
off abbreviation in the prefs just abbreviates the end of the string, with is
worse still.  If you're trying to win back netscape 4.7x users as well as new
ones, you should at least have taken the best functions from 4.7x and used them.
I suggest the following rule for the abbreviation if someone can implement it
(manage to get the size of the tree):

Try to display everything
If can't, start by cutting all words from n-1 position to position 1.
If can't, cut the last word (position n) as well
If can't, shorten last word and abbreviate all others to first leter.

This may make it more clear and can be used as test case: 

e.g. for a newsgroup called fooo.ooooo.baaaaaar

f|
f.|
f..|
f...|
f... |
f.o...|
f.o... |
f.o.b...|
f.o.ba...|
f.o.baa...|
f.o.baaa...|
f.o.baaaaaar|
fo.o.baaaaaar|
foo.o.baaaaaar|
fooo.o.baaaaaar|
fooo.oo.baaaaaar|
fooo.ooo.baaaaaar|
fooo.oooo.baaaaaar|
fooo.ooooo.baaaaaar|


If you think it should be different, please comment.
BTW, the choice of abbreviating of not should be hooked in the UI.
QA Contact: huang → stephend
That's bass-ackward. The current scheme correctly preserves the final node as
the most significant part of the newsgroup name, it simply abbreviates too
aggressively. You can't think of foo.bar.baz in isolation, there are likely
related groups foo.bar.bat and so on. 

Think of the netscape.public.mozilla.* hierarchy. Repeating
"netscape.public.mozilla" is just noise, and the n.p.m. abbreviation is
appropriate. But the current scheme turns ca.driving, ca. politics,
comp.databases and comp.lang.javascript into

c.databasesc.driving
c.l.javascript
c.politics

completely obscuring the fact that the c's are different, even when there is
room for the full forms.

Given the ability to determine the width of the tree (I'm not holding out hope)
it should start abbreviating at the first node, then the next, etc.

Note that there is a per-server pref to eliminate abbreviation entirely, but
there's no UI for it. We should expose at least the global
"mail.server.default.abbreviate" in the UI.
*** Bug 105628 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I believe a UI pref is neccessary as are tooltips. I get bitten by this bug
because I'm subscribed to two newsgroups, iol.general and ie.general, both of
which appear as i.general so I have no idea which one I'm about to open.
A UI for this would be ridiculous, we should provide visible UI only for those
prefs that do matter. I don't consider whether the newsgroups-names should be
truncated or not to be one of them.  However, I think it sounds like an
excellent idea to make the folderpane 'smart' and figure out if it should
unabbreviate the groups upon resizing the splitter - so if the names would fit,
they will expand to use the full newsgroupname.
reassigning to sspitzer.  Yeah, we defintely need to make this smarter based on
the amount of space available.  Numerous alorithms have been posted in the
newsgroups.
Assignee: putterman → sspitzer
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Adding 4xp keyword since 4x had this, at least 4,7x on windows. It basically did
the same thing that is done now in moz if you make the pane really narrow,
except the "..." is in the middle instead of the right side. 

Is the current behaviour (the ... bit) a core function of the outliner, or is
this done with xul/javascript? Can it be fixed using Gerv's Patch Maker?
Keywords: 4xp
*** Bug 133956 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Just got an idea for some more algorithm. 
What about about splitting  the name of a newsgroup in severla parts on the
dots. And then make a tree like this:

-+netscape
 -+public
  -+mozilla
   - browser
   - docs
   - wishlist
 -"some more netscape-ng"
-+micro$oft
 - 666
 - Billy the Kid


This way we sould run into trouble with newsgroup-names. They would need to be 
extremely long that this scheme wouldn't work and then we could still combine it 
with the good algorithms proposed above. Another feature of it would be, that the 
newsgoups would be sorted (and if you have many "hideawayable") the way, too.
*** Bug 156413 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Re: comment 18,

That's bug 38931.
Only truncated if there is no room for the full name. Make all Fields
resizeable.
I think the solution of NS4.x - only truncated if there is no room for the full
name is the best. Most Users have 1024x768 ore more. So the most Newsgruop can
read complete. (See Attachment/jpg)
*** Bug 176594 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I once read somewhere, either in an other bug, or somewhere in the newsgroups,
on how make the newsgroup listing not ever be truncated with a pref change.

Does anyone know how to do this.
I was going to add a bug for this too.  It is most annoying not being able to
figure out the newsgroup name even when you widen the column width.
Looks like ns4 implementation uses truncation 'in the middle'. I vote for this
solution because this is the best way to solve the 2 most important issues:
- same abbreviation, but different names at begin of name string are confusing
- the last string component is most important if it is the only difference ;) 

Since I'm not a dev. its not my part to say this is a blocker, especially since
its more an enhancement than a bug. Still I'd like that to be fixed ;-) 
Perhaps, somebody has to take a look at NS 4.x source code (as released in 1998)...
(In reply to comment #24)
> I once read somewhere, either in an other bug, or somewhere in the newsgroups,
> on how make the newsgroup listing not ever be truncated with a pref change.
> 
> Does anyone know how to do this.

If you use Mozilla, type 'about:config' in the url bar and type 'abbreviate' and
change 'news.server.default.abbreviate' to 'false'. (needless to say, if you use
TB, you have to edit prefs.js manually). Then, you'll get exactly what NS 4.x
did (comment #21 and comment #26). My previous comment (comment #27) should be
ignored. I should have tried setting the pref. to false before writting it.

Given this, is this bug still valid? Or, should we morph it to 'change the
default for newsgroup abbreviation to false' or 'add UI for this pref'?
Product: Browser → Seamonkey
Assignee: sspitzer → mail
(In reply to comment #28)

> If you use Mozilla, type 'about:config' in the url bar and type 'abbreviate' and
> change 'news.server.default.abbreviate' to 'false'. (needless to say, if you use

Seems that the value name changed to mail.server.default.abbreviate, that's what I see in SeaMonkey 1.0.4 and Mozilla 1.7.12, but it works as you described.

> TB, you have to edit prefs.js manually). Then, you'll get exactly what NS 4.x
> did (comment #21 and comment #26).

Current releases of Thunderbird allow to open a similar window to about:config (Edit>Preferences>General>Config Editor button) but nothing is displayed when I type in abbreviate...

> Given this, is this bug still valid? Or, should we morph it to 'change the
> default for newsgroup abbreviation to false' or 'add UI for this pref'?  

I think that this bug is still valid. SeaMonkey and Thunderbird should, IMHO (simple SeaMonkey end user) manage the truncation automatically, displaying as much of the newsgroup name as possible according to the available place. Even with the option we're talking about, we're far from what's displayed in the attached screenshot of NS4.

BTW, shouldn't the product field be changed to Core or something else instead of Mozilla Application Suite?
Priority: P3 → --
QA Contact: stephend
Target Milestone: Future → ---
QA Contact: search
WFM => Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.9.1pre) Gecko/20090614 SeaMonkey/2.0b1pre

If you disagree on how exactly the newsgroup names are abbreviated please file a new bug for that particular issue.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 15 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.

Attachment

General

Creator:
Created:
Updated:
Size: