129883 - Filters Should be Shareable Across Multiple E-mail Accounts

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 34973

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement)

Description

[Ed Suominen]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.8) Gecko/20020204
BuildID:    2002020406

It's a pain to set up a bunch of filters for one account
([e-mail]) and then have to go manually copy them to
the rules.dat file of another account ([e-mail]). Why not change the
user interface or data structure for filters so that all filters are displayed
in one list, and the user can check a box for each account to which they should
apply?

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 34973 ***

Comment 2

[R.K.Aa.]

sorry.. - this is not an exact dup. Reopening.

Comment 3

[Robert Wall]

*** Bug 157507 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[laurel]

*** Bug 160184 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[gabriel]

My suggestion in bug 160184 was that when you create a filter in one account, it
is copied to all accounts, but is left unchecked in the other accounts.

Doing it that way wouldn't require any UI changes.

Comment 6

[gabriel]

OK I have been looking at the code, and now I see that the easiest way to do it
would probably be to change the 'new filter' dialog, and add a checkbox with the
title 'Copy to all accounts'.

I've had a go at creating a patch to do this. It's just the backend, the
checkbox itself still needs designing.

Maybe somebody could have a look at the patch and tell me if it looks OK.

Comment 7

[gabriel]

Attachment: First attempt at patch

Comment 8

[gabriel]

Attachment: Second attempt at patch

Comment 9

[gabriel]

Attachment: Third attempt

Comment 10

[gabriel]

Attachment: Complete patch

OK, I've tested this and it works.

It adds a checkbox next to the filter name 'copy to all email accounts'.
If you check the box, the filter is copied when you click OK to save the
filter.

If a filter of the same name already exists in another account, then a
duplicate won't be created.



Please can I get a review of this so I can check it in.

Comment 11

[gabriel]

Attachment: Complete patch, minor change

Comment 12

[Navin Gupta]

The tree/trunk is in lock down mode. I'll get to it when the tree opens. 

Comment 13

[Kevin Chen]

*** Bug 163475 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[gabriel]

Tree should be open again now. Any chance of getting this patch reviewed ?

Two comments about the code:
1) Should we add copyToAll() to Edit as well ?
2) I don't understand why, but setting args.copyToAll causes args.refresh to be
ignored.

Comment 15

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 201044 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

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

mass re-assign.

Comment 17

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 197515 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[Jack Byer]

Isn't the best solution to have seperate global filters and account-specific
filters? I can only speak for myself, but having seperate list of filters for
each account is a bug, not a feature. 

Comment 19

[karl holister]

*** Bug 236366 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[Alex Maneu]

I partly agree with Jack Byer. Mail filters should be applied to all accounts by
default. The account should only be a possible but not mandatory condition of
every filter.

Adding myself to CC :)

Comment 21

[Lyle Greg Lisle]

Newbie here,

   I gather this has not been implimented for lack of interest.  True?
   It's two years old. 

Comment 22

[timeless]

[e-mail]: it looks to me like no one read the 
Life Cycle of a Patch (formerly "Hacking Mozilla")
<http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/life-cycle.html> document

Comment 23

[[e-mail]]

Comment on attachment 93655 [details] [diff] [review]
Complete patch, minor change

I see you don't allow global edits, I assume this is because the existing
filter code isn't designed to overwrite arbitrary filters? Also there's no easy
way to tell if you copied the filter previously. The label is misleading
because your code will also copy to news and rss accounts. And I think any
copying code belongs in FilterEditor.js, although as other people mentioned a
global filter backend would be the most useful solution.

Comment 24

[Lyle Greg Lisle]

(In reply to comment #22)
> [e-mail]: it looks to me like no one read the 
> Life Cycle of a Patch (formerly "Hacking Mozilla")
> <http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/life-cycle.html> document

Huh?  I read it, but I don't see the applicability to my question.  As I said,
I'm new here, I was curious why there was no update on the status, even though a
patch was submitted (I thought) two years ago.  I'm just trying to understand
how this system works.  I could not see any way to discover where things stood.

I'm not stupid, just ignorant.

Comment 25

[timeless]

by no one i actually meant [e-mail]

the relevant section is:
When you have a patch, submit it to Bugzilla as an attachment to that bug. 

<done>

We're big believers in code review, so before code is checked in to the CVS
Repository it must be reviewed by the appropriate module owner or one of his
peers. Modules do not quite directly correspond to Bugzilla Components, but
there is a strong correlation.

To get review:
<needs to be done>
    * Ask the bug owner (assignee) explicitly for a review by setting the review
flag for the patch to ? (indicating that review is requested) and entering the
email address of the person from whom you are requesting review.
<needed to be done>

Comment 26

[Lyle Greg Lisle]

Boy, I can see it will be a while before I "get" this system.

Quote:
   * Ask the bug owner (assignee) explicitly for a review by setting the review
flag for the patch to ? (indicating that review is requested) and entering the
email address of the person from whom you are requesting review.
<needed to be done>

How does one do that?  I don't see a "review flag".

Comment 27

[Daniel Kirsch]

I would be very happy to see this feature realized. My opinion:

All filters should be set at one global place. You always see all defined
filters. I would not copy a filter for each account as suggested as this might
be necessary each time changing a filter and could be a problem when another
filter with the same name allready exists in another account.
The relevant accounts for each filter could be selected from a multiselect list
of all available accounts.
Two more buttons could make selection easier:
  "Set for default account"
  "Set for all accounts"

Comment 28

[Marek]

*** Bug 256495 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 29

[Stefan Borggraefe]

*** Bug 247428 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 30

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 259513 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 31

[Eugenia Loli]

>  "Set for default account"
>  "Set for all accounts"

No, this is the wrong way of doing it, because this takes out the possibility 
that a user wants to apply a filter ONLY for ONE account. Simply, do it as 
Outlook Express does it: the account should be one of the RULES.

That's the easiest way to go around all problems.

Comment 32

[Daniel Kirsch]

> No, this is the wrong way of doing it, because this takes out the possibility 
> that a user wants to apply a filter ONLY for ONE account.

No, the buttons should just make default selections easier. I also suggested:
"The relevant accounts for each filter could be selected from a multiselect list
of all available accounts." That should do exactly what you wrote.
However this doesn't need to be the best/easiest/most intuitiv way of course.

Comment 33

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 260424 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 34

[Gordon Schumacher]

I agree with an earlier comment - I think that the friendliest way to implement
this would be that in addition to all the "account specific" filters, there
should be a "Global Filters" section (which could perhaps be the one that comes
up by default).

Comment 35

[Howard Chu]

This looks like a dup of bug 34793.

Comment 36

[Howard Chu]

By the way, in bug 294632 (which I've now marked as a dup of 34973) I proposed
an alternate organization/UI for this feature, which I think is pretty reasonable.

Comment 37

[Robert Rothenberg]

(In reply to comment #36)
> By the way, in bug 294632 (which I've now marked as a dup of 34973) I proposed
> an alternate organization/UI for this feature, which I think is pretty 
> reasonable.

I agree. I think it's a more elegant solution to the problem.

One can simply add an option to folder-based filters so that the message was received on a certain account, and then one has the equivalent of account-based filters as needed.

Comment 38

[zug_treno]

*** Bug 330440 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 40

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

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 43

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

wanted‑thunderbird3-; can't see us getting to this unless someone submits a working patch - which would be very welcome.

Comment 46

[:aceman]

Actually, why is this not a dupe of bug 34973 ?

Comment 47

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to :aceman from comment #46)
> Actually, why is this not a dupe of bug 34973 ?

inclined to agree.