16336 - Get Next N (older) newsgroup messages

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect, P2)

Description

[laurel]

This is a feature tracking bug.

Currently we have only Get New Messages for newsgroups.  We need to have the Get
Next N older messages working.

In current builds, there is no menu command to do so. There also is no warning
dialog if you've got the pref set and there are more than N messages to
download.  Let me know if these two items need separate bugs.

Comment 1

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

accepting bug.

Comment 2

[lchiang]

move to M16.  Not M15 stoppers

Comment 3

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

not a feature, since it should not be hard to get do the right thing here.

so many little things to do, not enough time.

Comment 4

[Michael La Guardia]

Yes this is a feature.  putting on nsbeta2- radar.  We don't need this to ship.

Comment 5

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

moving to m17, since it is not a m16 blocker.

Comment 6

[laurel]

I just want to comment on Michael La Guardia's comments... this may not be
deemed necessary for beta2, but I think we do need it in the release.

Comment 7

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

I agree, we need to do this before rtm.

otherwise, you can easily get into a state where you can't get the news articles
you want.

Comment 8

[Karen Huang]

*** Bug 21084 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[lchiang]

I will nominate for nsbeta2 again since this is technically not UI polish or
performance which falls into nsbeta3.  Here is how this feature works and the
ramifications:

1. User subscribes to a newsgroup.  Let's say the newsgroup has 1000 messages in
it.
2.  The user opens the newsgroup and gets a dialog that asks to download a
certain number of messages at a time.
3.  The user decides to download the most recent 20 messages.
4.  The user then decides to read some of the older messages because he is
interested in a particular thread or may not find what he is looking for in the
20 most recent messages
5.  There is no way for the user to go and obtain the older messages in the
newsgroup without having to unsubscribe from the newsgroup, subscribe again,
download more messages, and wade through the messages that he's already read.

The numbers I used here are just an example.

Seth had estimated one day to fix this.

Comment 10

[leger]

Putting on [nsbeta2-] radar. Not critical to beta2.  Adding rtm keyword.  We 
will get this done for beta3 or rtm...but will not hold beta2 for this bug.

Comment 11

[laurel]

possible release note item for beta2

Comment 12

[selmer (gone)]

Adding mail4 triage nomination keyword.

Comment 13

[lchiang]

+ per mail triage

Comment 14

[Karen Huang]

Since this is nsbeta3+, so Ccing mscott & bienvenu....

Comment 15

[Scott MacGregor]

this smells like a feature to me =) I'd much rather see snews not prompt you for
your password every time we make a connection than have this bug as beta3+

Comment 16

[David :Bienvenu]

the problem is, without this feature, it's impossible for an ordinary user to
get older news headers - in other words, if you say "just download the last 100
headers", you can never see any previous headers.

Comment 17

[lchiang]

P2 per mail triage; cc: naving.

Comment 18

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

just landed most of the work for this, the remaining bits are on the way.

Comment 19

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

landing rest of the fix today.

Comment 20

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

I've got the last bit of this fix in hand.
I'll check in once the tree opens.

Comment 21

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

fix checked in.

"Get Next [N] News Messages" shows up when reading news (but is hidden when
reading mail.  [N] changes to match the current server's max articles pref.

there are performance issues when N is large.  if you have sorted your
newsgroups by date (most recent article last), and [N] is large, it will take a
while for "get next news messages" to complete.

this is because we have to insert the articles one at the time on screen at the
top of the tree.

this is a know problem, and appears to affect "get new mail" when you sort by
"newest message first" and if you "delete all" with a lot of messages.

adding putterman to the cc list.

Comment 22

[Karen Huang]

Verified Get Next N(older) newsgroup messages now is working on all the 
platforms:
Linux 09-01-08-M18 commercial build
WinNT 09-01-08-M18 commercial build
Mac 09-01-10-M18 commercial build
Marking as verified!!