207862 - Incorporate thread views ("Watched Threads with Unread", etc.) into MailViews dropdown list

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Backend, enhancement)

Description

[Sacher Khoudari]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-AT; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-AT; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401

It would be nice to have the "Watched Threads with Unread"-option from
View->Messages in the "View" dropdown-box  in the main window. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I'm not sure how well this request fits into the current model, or whether the 
model will be further adjusted.  Note that the items in the MailViews dropdown 
are essentially quicksearches applied as filters to the folder's messages; the 
longstanding bug 135326 is about the lack of a threading for search results.

Note incidentally: View|Threads|Watched Threads as a separate item from "Watched 
Threads with Unread" is a separate bug 73562; I don't think you are looking for 
that item, but the summary of this bug made me think this was a duplicate of 
that.  I'm updating the summary for clarity.

Comment 2

[Jason M. Abels]

Actually, the whole reason that the threaded views were given there own menu is
that they don't work nicely with filters. Try adding a new filter to the "View"
widget, and you will see that viewing messages as threaded is not even an option.

Not a duplicate of 135326, but certainly dependent on it.

Comment 3

[Matth78]

It would be nice to have a thread drop down box next to the view one.
(Basically it will be a shortcut for the View->Threads menu.)

Comment 4

[Stewart Gordon]

That would seem a bit pointless to me - it would just further emphasise to the 
end user the superfluity of the two separate features, and anyway we'd have to 
take it out again when this consolidation is implemented.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

The primary reason for watched is I think so one can monitor threads. So I would to see watched unread and read messages shown with unread messages.  Some simple reasons:
1. a reminder to answer someone's question in a few days if no one else has.  
2. I posted a question, and I want to post new info in a couple days
3. I want to see all the activity from a watched thread, read and unread, in context with other messages in a newsgroup.

In short, it can be useful to see threads that don't have new posts. The utility of "watched" is diminished if it doesn't have a view option that puts it on par with displaying unwatched threads with new posts, so that both can be displayed.

Is this more appropriately addressed in bug 218208 or some other bug?

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Is this more appropriately addressed in bug 218208 or some other bug?

Bug 73562 (Seamonkey) / bug 294901 (TB) are, I believe, about adding the specific feature you're describing, but as an option under View|Threads.
I think that hard-coding "Watched Threads" under that menu would be simpler to implement than adding the additional search criterion of "message in watched thread" or whatever it would take to get bug 218208 solved.  (Also, there's no way to set the MailView's threaded state, altho that's not strictly necessary).
But 73562 is a very old bug and nobody's stepped up to the plate to actually patch it, so maybe it is hard.

Comment 7

[Stewart Gordon]

(In reply to comment #6)
> I think that hard-coding "Watched Threads" under that menu would be simpler to
> implement than adding the additional search criterion of "message in watched
> thread" or whatever it would take to get bug 218208 solved.

I'm not sure about this.  ISTM bug 218208 would be very simple to implement.  Hence its having the 'polish' keyword.

OK, so bug 73562 would also be simple to implement.  But it's a workaround for bug 184231, rather than bug 218208 (which is one of 184231's dependencies).

> But 73562 is a very old bug and nobody's stepped up to the plate to actually
> patch it, so maybe it is hard.

More likely that people just haven't been bothered for some unknown reason.