176238 - (newsreader-core) [meta] Make Mozilla not suck as a newsreader

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: General, defect)

Description

[Felix Miata]

Current bugzilla search for new, reopened, and assigned mailnews bugs totals
4,984. Here are several notable and/or egregious ones affecting newsreading:

Bug 21344 nor 4xp Location toolbar (menu of mail folders and newsgroups)
Bug 23633 nor Newsgroup names should only be truncated if there is no room for
the full name
Bug 35338 nor 4xp Overzealous blocking of cross-posting to multiple hosts
Bug 35689 nor 4xp Newsgroup postings don't linkify newsgroup header (like 4.x)
Bug 36538 nor 4xp 'mark newsgroup read' and 'message|mark|all read'
Bug 40260 nor 4xp Subscribe dialog should support "new" newsgroups
Bug 43278 nor 4xp Crossposts (same Message-ID) not marked as read in other groups
Bug 54911 maj 4xp News article gets sent to the right news group but on the
wrong server
Bug 60981 maj Multipart news messages: no combine and decode
Bug 62586 nor 4xp Need Titletips (or tooltips) for Cropped Text in Message
Header Pane
Bug 91662 nor Long strings in mail or news header cause scroll bars and
attachment window to disappear, making message unreadable
Bug 95623  nor Must differentiate between newsgroup-followup and email-reply
Bug 97186 enh Method of having alphabetical sort for newsgroups in the folder pane
Bug 109935 nor 4xp Mozilla message quoting should be more like Netscape 4.x
Bug 111665 nor 4xp Re-sorting messages should scroll to show selection
Bug 118899 nor 4xp Time Zone Never Displayed Within Message Headers
Bug 119964 enh Support new USENET encoding -- yEnc
Bug 129052 enh Incoming Mail Notification Should Be Like Netscape 3
Bug 129574 maj 4xp Autosubscribe/expired message links open in new window
Bug 131371 enh per-newsgroup signatures
Bug 135964 nor 4xp View -> Messages Change Deselects Displayed Message
Bug 137701 maj newsgroup postings stored as draft will send under wrong account
Bug 150274 nor 4xp User should be able to reorder the Newsgroups like in NS4
Bug 161968 nor Wrapping quoted lines get wrong quote status
Bug 161969 nor Deleting quoted text keeps quote status
Bug 164680 nor Cannot select messages or folders while creating filters
Bug 171442 nor 4xp Incomplete BCC list displayed using "all" for view - > headers
Bug 174017 nor Multiple enters after quoted text does not move cursor

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

no one needs this tracking bug -> [e-mail]

Comment 2

[Man]

bug 93426

Comment 3

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

some of these bugs are fixed.

I recommend listing them as bugs that depend on this one.

Comment 4

[Felix Miata]

I don't think I understand. None of the listed bugs are currently fixed. Fixed
bugs show with strike-through here on the web page. Do you recommend that all
the originally listed bugs be added to bugs this bug depends on, like in bug 168066?

Comment 5

[Jonadab the Unsightly One (Nathan Eady)]

Adding dependencies as indicated by reporter.  Also bug 12699, which is one of 
the most important newsreader bugs, IMO.  If Mozilla can't meet these basic
requirements, it isn't suitable for reading usenet -- and that would be a great
shame.

Comment 6

[Peter Lairo]

There is a bug about supporting threaded *and* sorted views, but I couldn't find
it. :(

Comment 7

[Eric Vaandering (no email)]

Peter,

That's 72493. Adding that one and 93426.

Comment 8

[Felix Miata]

Bug 62586 was duped to bug 32157. Replacing in depends.

Comment 9

[Felix Miata]

Bug 111665 was inexplicably duped to bug 186999. Replacing depends.

Comment 10

[Stewart Gordon]

These might as well be subtrackers of this one:

Bug 71728 - [META] Message count problems tracker bug for News.
Bug 191298 - [META] Tracker for watch/ignore icon problems
Bug 192905 - [META] Tracker for Rewrap command issues

Comment 11

[Christian Stadler]

Nominating Bug 168772: [rfe] Option to ignore specified users

Comment 12

[Stewart Gordon]

Out of place.  That bug is about Bugzilla if you hadn't cared to notice.

Comment 13

[Christian Stadler]

Sorry, I haven't recognized that.

Well, Bug 10097 Ability to add user to 'killfile' with a single click
is about MailNews and I hope, that nothings wrong with that one, this time.

Comment 14

[Felix Miata]

If you look at the original comment, you'll see "not suck" essentially means fix
the broken things and restore functionality lost in leaving Netscape 3 & 4
behind. This is not a general tracker for enhancement requests. Two EN in the
original list were wanted in N4 before its development ceased (97186 & 131371)
plus the two combine/decode bugs, also having roots before Mozilla 5 began in
ernest. Nice as ignore user and easy killfile would be, not having them doesn't
make Mozilla suck.

Comment 15

[Felix Miata]

Bug 164680 was duped to bug 152140. Replacing in depends.

Comment 16

[Nicolas Pioch]

Please add bug 89939 as a major dependancy.

Mozilla doesn't even support news:<msg-id> URLs as required by
RFC 1738, see http://www.w3.org/Addressing/rfc1738.txt

It currently confuses the <msg-id> with the NNTP hostname to connect to.

4xp, used to work fine across all Netscape Navigator versions, ever.

Comment 17

[Felix Miata]

Adding bug 9942 nor 4xp Message headers don't scroll with the message.

Comment 18

[Yves Lambert]

Should'nt it be set to mail-news?
vote for this bug!!

Comment 19

[Felix Miata]

See comment 14. This bug is not for tracking general enhancement requests ->
removing 27768.

Added bugs need descriptions provided.

There is no tracking component for mailnews.

Comment 20

[Felix Miata]

83364 removed. See comments 14 & 19.

Comment 21

[Felix Miata]

Adding bug 62033 nor 4xp Should display |References| links in message display window

Comment 22

[Karthik Sheka]

Adding bug 36816 - news should use the server's username / password when
authenticating

Without this bug fixed, any time you read from a news sever that requires
passwords, the passwords are not remembered.  Pretty annoying for those using
Giganews and other subscription based news servers.

Comment 23

[Felix Miata]

Please do as comment 14 and comment 19 specify when adding bugs. Broken view
source offline doesn't appear to qualify, since among other things that problem
has an obvious workaround.

Comment 24

[Stewart Gordon]

Looking back at your comment 14, the scope of your tracker isn't at all clear
from the summary/description.

BTW, did you mean

- fix the broken things and (restore functionality lost in leaving Netscape 3 &
4 behind)
or
- (fix the broken things and restore functionality) lost in leaving Netscape 3 &
4 behind
?

I think we should change the summary line so that it makes sense.  And should
this whole tracker have the 4xp keyword?

Comment 25

[Felix Miata]

fix the (esp. notable and/or egregious) broken things, and restore functionality
lost in leaving Netscape 3 & 4 behind

This bug is not intended to track every bug found in newsreading.To me, "suck"
means serious (e.g. notable and/or egregious, as stated in comment 0, sentence
2) problems, such as functionality lost by "upgrading" from Netscape 3 or 4,
features asked for before N4 development ceased still not implemented (e.g. bug
60981), significant "enhancements" required to achieve basic parity with
competition (e.g. bug 119964) and non-tivial brokenness (e.g. bug 54911, bug
91662, bug 129574). 

That many depends here happen to be 4xp doesn't make this bug 4xp.

The summary means exactly what I intended. Netscape 4 remains my primary
newsreader because this stuff doesn't get fixed. News doesn't take a back seat
to the browser - it's hidden in the trunk. That sucks.

Comment 26

[Yves Lambert]

Added bug:112422 (searching for messageid missing) and set it as a bug: 89939
blocker (see messageidfinder mozdev project)

Comment 27

[Felix Miata]

No one to add depends to this except assignee, QA or drivers. If you think a bug
should be added to depends list here, nominate it only. See comment 0, comment
14 & comment 25.

Comment 28

[Christian Stadler]

One question:
Shouldn't 'Product' be MailNews instead of Browser?

Comment 29

[Jacek Piskozub]

MailNews has no Tracking sub-component. 

Yes, I tried to change it ;-)

Comment 30

[Felix Miata]

bug 91662 (removed) duped to bug 247833 (added)

Comment 31

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Felix, the competition includes 20 year old programs like trn, which 
had killfiles and thread pruning.  mozilla's newsreader sucks, in large
measure, because it STILL doesn't have those features.

I knew the manager of the mailnews team at Netscape (I was netscape employee 
1522).  He believed that Netscape's mail/news client should be targetted at 
corporate intranet use, and he didn't believe that killfiles and thread 
pruning made sense in a corporate intranet environment.  

But mozilla clients are not primarily about the corporate intranet 
enviroment, and are expected to compete with the products used by the 
masses on the open internet.  That includes essential features like one 
button plonk, and one button tree pruning, and killfile initiated tree 
pruning, like trn had in 1990 (or before).

If every other mailnews bug gets fixed, and mozilla/TB/SM still doesn't 
have usable thread management, then the news reader still sucks.  

Comment 32

[Armando Villani]

Please consider adding bug 370889. This function is available in many newsreader including Outlook Express.

Comment 33

[Armando Villani]

More parity with competition bugs:
Bug 37775 – Subscribe to newsgroups dialog should support description
Bug 102804 – New newsgroups don't show up in subscription window
Bug 174234 – Implement full newsgroup name as tooltip on hover of group name 
Bug 344833 – Inform user whether a newsgroups is moderated or not when posting
Bug 370889 – Searching for both 2 or more keywords in Manage newsgroup subscription

Comment 34

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

More nominees:
Bug 10097 - Ability to add user to 'killfile' with a single click 
Bug 11054 - Ignore (kill) a Subthread (branch: not the whole thread) 
Bug 16913 - Filter news based on any headers 

Comment 35

[Jürgen 'JiHa' Harter]

I'd like to nominate
Bug 112422 – Searching for Message-IDs missing (news)

Yes, I've noticed comments 26 and 27.
Actually Message-IDs are used very often to cross reference between postings. At the moment you have to use google groups manually which is really annoying.

The feature was provided by the addon messageidfinder but this not longer works with trunk. See also Bug 62033 which was a blocker here and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112422#c6

Comment 36

[Thomas K. (:tom)]

(In reply to comment #35)
> I'd like to nominate
> Bug 112422 – Searching for Message-IDs missing (news)
> 
> Yes, I've noticed comments 26 and 27.

You can actually directly link them, like so: comment 26 & comment 27

> with trunk. See also Bug 62033 which was a blocker here and
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112422#c6

Same here: bug 112422 comment 6

I have looked through here, and read comment 14 & comment 17, and I believe that I have a good 'parity with competition' bug (ref: comment 33).  It is bug 339983, support for .NZB files.  I know this kinda depends upon bug 119964 and bug 60981 being fixed, though.  This is my nomination.

Comment 37

[Jens Müller (:tessarakt)]

Shouldn't this be Product: MailNews Core now?

Comment 38

[Felix Miata]

meta/tracking does not work there

Comment 39

[Stéphane Grégoire (yamo)]

I propose depends on bug #520784.

Comment 40

[Stéphane Grégoire (yamo)]

May depends on #617287

Comment 41

[Felix Miata]

I filed this on the suite, still use the suite, and hope to see this fixed in the suite. I've never used Thunderbird, and don't expect to.

Comment 42

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Wait, why is this not set back to the "Core" product? It's relevant both to the suite and to Thunderbird in pretty much the same way, right? I mean, at least the dependent bugs are; the title can have different interpretations, but still.

Comment 43

[Stéphane Grégoire (yamo)]

May this bug can depend on bug #1456778

Comment 44

[Tristan Miller]

(In reply to Felix Miata from comment #41)

I filed this on the suite, still use the suite, and hope to see this fixed
in the suite. I've never used Thunderbird, and don't expect to.

(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #42)

Wait, why is this not set back to the "Core" product? It's relevant both to
the suite and to Thunderbird in pretty much the same way, right? I mean, at
least the dependent bugs are; the title can have different interpretations,
but still.

Yes, the majority of bugs this report depends on are core issues that affect both SeaMonkey and Thunderbird. So notwithstanding the fact that it was initially filed for the Mozilla Application Suite (now SeaMonkey), it would now be better filed, and more discoverable by developers, under the product MailNews Core ("Mail and news components common to Thunderbird and SeaMonkey"). I've gone ahead and done so.

I have also moved the SeaMonkey-specific bugs to a dedicated tracking bug, Bug 1955121, and created another dedicated tracking bug, Bug 1955122, for Thunderbird-specific bugs. Both of these tracking bugs now depend on this bug.