250070 - "Mark Newsgroup Read" does not affect new messages that have not yet been received.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Kurt Albershardt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.0;U;en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape 7.1
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 0.71 (20040626)

While the focus is on a different group or server, right-clicking on a newsgroup
in the Folders pane and choosing "Mark Newsgroup Read' appears to work--but when
you return to the group, the download headers dialog appears.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Left-click on a NG to move focus there.
2. Right-click on a different NG and choose 'Mark Newsgroup Read'
3. NG appears read
Actual Results:  
When I left-click on the NG to focus, unread messages appear (or download
headers dialog pops up.)

Left-click on the NG first, then right-click and makr read and TBird behaves as
expected.


Expected Results:  
Marked the second NG read and when I return to the NG, it is marked read.

No themes, no plugins.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

This is Seamonkey bug 189277.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 244361 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Bug 318792 related?

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Bug 318792 related?

I don't think so.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

more complete picture using current trunk

ng1=newsgroup 1, ng2=newsgroup 2

comment 0 still correct, but only when ng1 *does not* have unread messages (i.e. all are read)

in the case where ng1 *has unread messages* ...
1. click ng1 where ng1 *has unread messages*
2. r-click ng2 which has unread messages, mark ng read
results: ng2 unread count unchanged, ng2 still bold

Comment 6

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

I've been thinking about how to handle this (and its sister bug 189277 for Seamonkey), and I posted a patch (attachment 450742 [details] [diff] [review]) over there that probably works, albeit in a pretty hacky manner.

After thinking about this more, I realized that part of the issue is the somewhat bizarre behavior of newsgroups in the folder tree. As I recall, newsgroup messages are automatically retrieved when 1) their periodic "get mail" timer runs out, 2) the news server item in the folder tree is expanded, and 3) the newsgroup itself is clicked on in the folder tree. Mail messages only get retrieved in case (1) and I believe case (3) when the folder isn't set to always check for messages. (Someone might need to correct me on this.)

At the very least, I think making newsgroups automatically check for messages periodically would ameliorate the problems in this bug, but the underlying issue would still exist for news/mail. Dropping (2) above would also help reduce the visibility of this, which is something I'd push for anyway (toggling a tree item is not an obvious way of checking for new messages in my opinion), but that might cause wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Comment 7

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

CCing bienvenu at the suggestion of dmose from bug 189277 comment 19

Comment 8

[David :Bienvenu]

I believe the easiest way to fix this (for both newsgroups and imap folders) is to update the folder, and then mark all read. UpdateFolder takes a listener, so it would not be hard to do the mark all read in the OnStopRunning notification.

Comment 9

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

That's essentially what I did in the patch over in bug 189277, but I'm not totally convinced that's the right way. For instance, shouldn't the markAllMessagesRead method be responsible for that?

The other thing that concerns me a bit is that this bug is just for newsgroups, when in reality the same issue should be occurring for IMAP. I wonder if part of why people reported this for news was because, by default, newsgroups aren't set to automatically check for messages periodically. Maybe it should (I know it's one of the first things I set when creating a news account in Thunderbird).

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

markAllMessagesRead could do that though it would be a bit harder. But we'd only have to do it in one place. I see this happen on imap and it is annoying. I believe there's a bug open on it.

That patch over in bug 189277 isn't quite right since I don't think marking your pop3 inbox should try to get new messages. Unfortunately, UpdateFolderWithListener only is implemented on imap folders.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Alfred, does this reproduce for you?

Comment 17

[Alfred Peters [:infofrommozilla]]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #16)

Alfred, does this reproduce for you?

Yes, the current status is set to read without previously updating the group.

In my opinion, this is not a bug at all.

When I apply "Mark all read" to a group that I haven't sighted before, I do it because I don't want to read yesterday's articles. However, I do want to read the new articles from today. So it makes sense to update the group afterwards.

If we always update the status before, this functionality is lost.

Comment 18

[Hartmut Welpmann [:welpy-cw]]

Even if you select a newsgroup so that it is updated, but then wait some time before using the folder's context menu to mark the newsgroup as read, new unread messages may appear when you click "Get Messages" immediately afterwards. So the idea here is to refresh the newsgroup immediately before you mark it as read, so that those new messages are included. For the same reason Alfred describes, I don't think it's justified to change this behavior after 20 years. I suggest to WONTFIX this.