231138 - SORT ORDER of folders is case insensitively, but under subscribe to folders, is case sensitive

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[L A Walsh]

User-Agent:       lynx 5.5 (vision impaired version)
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4 (20031205)

on the main folder panel items are sorted case insensitively,
but when you choose to subscribe to folders, items are 
sorted, first A-Z, then a-z.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. look at folder list in XP, sort order is equivalent to en_US
2. menu (right) click choose subscribe.
3. Note folder order in subscribe window sorted [hidden ("." files), A-Z, a-z]


Actual Results:  
saw folders in "C" collating order

Expected Results:  
consistent sorting order  (equiv of LC_COLLATE=en_US under linux).

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Can't find any older reports of this problem. Setting status to New.

Comment 2

[Chris Petersen]

Probably related somehow...  I just upgraded to nightly snapshot from 6/28, and
mail folders now sort ignoring non-letter prefix characters which I use to
prioritize certain folders in my list.

This relates to thunderbird's completely ignoring of the LANG and LC_COLLATE
environment variables (in linux).  If I set these to C, I expect that
thunderbird sort mail folders according to the ASCII (or UTF-8) value of the
letters, not according to some natural-language attempt.  Either that, or let me
have a custom sort order by dragging things around in the list.

Comment 3

[Chris Petersen]

Please disregard my earlier comment.  I'll file a separate bug.  As for the sort
differences between "subscribed-only," and "all," I'm still seeing the fully
case-and-prefix-insensitive sort on both (linux, 6/28 nightly snapshot).

Comment 4

[slipcon]

I am seeing similar on Thunderbird 0.7 for the Mac - my problem is that I have a couple of folders with 
special names that I'd like to show up at the top, specifically _IN and _Process.  Thunderbird 0.7 on 
Linux at work seems to sort them to the top, as does Mail.app on OSX, but Thunderbird on the mac 
puts them at the bottom.  

Comment 5

[poige]

(In reply to comment #4)
> I am seeing similar on Thunderbird 0.7 for the Mac - my problem is that I have
a couple of folders with 
> special names that I'd like to show up at the top, specifically _IN and
_Process.  Thunderbird 0.7 on 
> Linux at work seems to sort them to the top, as does Mail.app on OSX, but
Thunderbird on the mac 
> puts them at the bottom.  

This very problem made me searching through the Bugzilla because I also prefer
to use the underscore sign (_) to have subfolders sorted in a proper way. Recent
releases of Mozilla and Thunderbird break this useful feature. I'd like to have
it working again.

Comment 6

[Ian Young]

Ditto on the Mac inconsistency.  I have an IMAP store I use in Thunderbird 1.0
from both Windows and Mac, and my attempt to force a sort order using a folder
called [Whatever] sorts to the top of the list in Windows, bottom on Mac OSX.

Comment 7

[Ken Crandall]

This bug seems to still be around after being open for a while...

I agree with the above post: I use characters to cause certain folders to sort higher (e.g. "!Customers" should come before "Additions" or whatever) and this is a nice feature.  It works in Outlook and in other mail programs but Thunderbird (and Evolution, for that matter) seem to try to "know better".

I think that something just as simple as an about:config switch to change folder sorting to asciibetical would be nice...

Comment 8

[John Stracke]

I'm seeing this bug.  It's Thunderbird 2.0.0.23, on Fedora 10, on x86-64, installed via the Fedora package thunderbird-2.0.0.23-1.fc10.x86_64.  Folder order is case-insensitive in the folder view at the left side of the mail window, but case-sensitive in the Subscribe dialog.

Comment 9

[L A Walsh]

Still a bug in 2.0.0.24 (from 2010 02/29)

Don't know if it is still a prob in newer stuff...

Comment 10

[Matt Weatherford]

This bug is still in Thunderbird for version 52.1.1 on Windows

It has caused us a fair amount of grief during debugging a mail folder sync problem, it appears that folders "aaa-test" are not showing up on the subscribe list because we can see them off to the left near the top of the IMAP mailbox, but have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Subscribe window (to the section below the hundreds of upper-CASE folder names) in order to see it.  

Please use consistent folder sort alogrithms in thunderbird !  :)

p.s. thanks for a great product!

Matt 
U of W 
Seattle, WA

Comment 11

[wmbgzll]

18 years later this issue still exists. It deserves some love!

Comment 13

[wmbgzll]

Issue still there after 21 years, in Thunderbird 128.3.2esr.

The Component attribute of this issue is set to "Account Manager", which seems wrong. Perhaps someone can change it to "Mail Window Front End" or "Folder and Message Lists" ?

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I have noticed this.

Comment 15

[gene smith]

The order in the "subcribe" dialog is the order that imap server returns them in the LIST and/or LSUB responses. I don't see anything in imap RFC 3501 that specifies the order of folders returned by LIST or LSUB, so the display order in subscribe dialog might vary depending on server. So this would requires special sorting before display to match the main folder list.

The order in the main folder list sorts the "special" folders first (with INBOX always at the top) followed by user created folders in case insensitive order. I don't know how folders starting with a number or special chars like underscore are sorted or if it varies by platform/OS.