345795 - No context menu to compact News folders

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[Cédric Corazza]

There's no context menu to compact News folders though when the advanced tab in Edit > Preferences menu is populated (Compact folders when it will save over xxx Kb), Thunderbird asks if we want to compact News folders.
More generally, what's the point to let the users the option to handle compaction? They don't even know what this implies unless we explain them. We've got several complains about slow Thunderbird startings because of that.
IMHO, Thunderbird should at least compact automatically all folders on exit, as if you made a wrong action, you expect to revert it during the session, not the day after, right?

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

AFAICT compact never shows in context for news accounts, regardless of option settings

Comment 2

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> There's no context menu to compact News folders though when the advanced tab in
> Edit > Preferences menu is populated (Compact folders when it will save over
> xxx Kb), Thunderbird asks if we want to compact News folders.

Compacting just gets rid of deleted messages in the cache, and is not applicable to ng folders.

There isn't any more UI where Thunderbird asks if "we want to compact News folders", not that I could find it under "advanced tab in Edit > Preferences"

Wayne, thoughts?

Comment 3

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

if a ng is selected for offline use the msgs are stored in the same format so compact could apply to that unless it's done automatically whenever ng offline messages are expired.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I can't speak with any authority (or experience for that matter), but it STM not many ppl will have ng offline. IMO if the store is not offline there's little reason to present the action on a context. And it is available always via file|compact

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Well, with bug 460819 the File | Compact Folders menu is enabled again for news. 

But I think it's not common enough to want to remove cached offline messages from single newsgroups to actually be of use in the folder context menu.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

jcranmer, can you offer a perspective on this?

Note: if compact threshold has been set in options (as it now is by default for new users), the threshold for auto compact is checked when any newsgroup is opened.

(In reply to comment #5)
> Well, with bug 460819 the File | Compact Folders menu is enabled again for news. 
> 
> But I think it's not common enough to want to remove cached offline messages
> from single newsgroups to actually be of use in the folder context menu.

Perhaps true. However, context menu isn't offered for news server either.

Comment 7

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

If autocompaction is on by default, then I don't particularly see any need to have a specific context menu item, other than perhaps convergence with other types of accounts. Judging from how much interest this bug has gotten, it's not a particularly desired enhancement. News is also likely going to see most of its deletion only via retention limits anyways, so it's nowhere near as important as it is for mail accounts.

Comment 8

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

WONTFIX as per the news owner.