267754 - Order of messages within groups always by Date, Ascending

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[lev]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.9.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.9.1

When using the new Grouped message view, I would like to have today's messages
at the top, with the latest received message first. However, the View -> Sort By
-> (Ascending/Descending) preference seems to only re-order groups, but always
displays the messages inside the groups in Ascending order (for the date field
this means oldest first)

In effect this means that the messages received last which should arguably be
the most visible, are displayed in the middle of the message list.

Adding a separate pref/option to sort the groups and their contents separately
is probably overkill, but at least both the groups and the messages they contain
should both be controlled with the sort order option already available.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Seth Kinast]

This is completely counterintuitive, to have Today's messages at the top but the
most recently received ones at the bottom of the group. It makes Group By
completely unusable for me. I think the sort options should act on the
individual messages, which are then intelligently grouped. The current methods
sort the groups, and then leave the messages inside the groups sorted as they
were previously.

Comment 2

[Mike Fedyk]

I can confirm this on win2k with TB 0.9.

I think the sort order should affect both group order, and message order.  If
you sort ascending (todays messages at the bottom), and don't also put the
"today" group at the bottom, you will have the current functionality this bug is
complaining about.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #0)
> the View -> Sort By -> (Ascending/Descending) preference seems to only
> re-order groups, but always displays the messages inside the groups in
> Ascending order (for the date field this means oldest first)

Not exactly.  Rather, it re-orders the groups but always displays the messages 
inside the groups in Date Ascending order.  When your sort is on Date, then it's 
confusing.  For other sort criteria, it's either the right thing or the wrong 
thing, depending on expectations.

Fixing this "properly" -- so it doesn't result in an unexpected display for 
anyone -- will probably require the same sort of complex UI called that would be 
required for multi-criterion sorting (bug 57898).

As a quick hack, tho, it's certainly not infeasible that when grouping Date, 
Descending, to sort the messages within the group Descending as well.

Comment 4

[Eric Engstrom]

(In reply to comment #3)

> Fixing this "properly" -- so it doesn't result in an unexpected display for 
> anyone -- will probably require the same sort of complex UI called that would be 
> required for multi-criterion sorting (bug 57898).

Agreed, but...

> As a quick hack, tho, it's certainly not infeasible that when grouping Date, 
> Descending, to sort the messages within the group Descending as well.

If nothing else is done, then this "hack" would provide the most intuitive (imo)
ordering of the messages.  

It would also correspond to what Outlook does, and therefore be less confusing
to those of us who use both (forced to by work for outlook - choose to for
personal email otherwise)...

Comment 5

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Setting TM to 1.0 for consideration.

Comment 6

[Scott MacGregor]

not a stop ship bug

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 270758 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Duncan Miller]

From an acceptance point of view I would have thought it useful to sort this out
pre 1.0. 
I for one, and obviously quite a few others, find the 'most recent at top' order
most useful regardless of other sort issues.

Perhaps this has already been suggested perhaps the default sort order should be
a specific setting in Options, which would apply within other sorts.

Comment 9

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 271392 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Seth Kinast]

re comment #6, comment #8

I can't see many people finding Group By Date useful without this bug being
fixed. Surely it merits attention for 1.0 final?

Comment 11

[Kai Stukenbrock]

I agree with the previous comment. I like the grouping feature, now that the
grouping is remembered. But I always sort my messages date descending, so the
grouping feature is broken for my purpose.
(Sorry for the me too).

Comment 12

[Pascal Quantin]

This is definitely disturbing for anyone using the descending order. Too bad,
groups seemed a great feature ! :(

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: proposed fix

If we're reverse sorted by date, insert messages into group threads in
descending order. To do this, I had to break out the binary insertion code in
nsMsgDBView so I could access it from the group thread code. That was a bit of
a pain, but it means that I get to use binary insertion code that I know works
:-) The other big plus for this patch is that it speeds up insertion into all
group threads, because we use a binary search insertion, instead of an
interative approach.

Comment 14

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 167688 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

let me know if this scares you, Scott :-) the diff looks bigger than it is,
since I'm really getting rid of some code and re-using some old code.

Comment 15

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: better fix

this fixes the two issues we talked about, Scott. The opening in a stand-alone
msg window is this part:

-  if (retIndex != nsMsgViewIndex_None && m_flags[retIndex] &
MSG_VIEW_FLAG_DUMMY && !expand && !(m_flags[retIndex] & MSG_FLAG_ELIDED))
+  if (retIndex != nsMsgViewIndex_None && m_flags[retIndex] &
MSG_VIEW_FLAG_DUMMY &&	!(m_flags[retIndex] & MSG_FLAG_ELIDED))

because we're now passing in true for expand, because of the opening from the
search result window bug I fixed earlier. I tested that opening a group with
remember last msg selected still works in the non-date case, and it works in
the date case because we remember the expand/collapse state for date groups.

This var, and the reference to it,	  PRBool insertedAtThreadRoot =
!msgIndexInThread;

fixes the insertion when the top level message in the thread is selected when a
new message arrives.

Comment 16

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 167722 [details] [diff] [review]
better fix

see prev desc of fix.

Comment 17

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 167688 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

clearing request for old patch.

Comment 18

[Scott MacGregor]

zoinks I was going to check this into tonight for you David, but you attached
the wrong patch :)

Let's touch base on this again tomorrow morning.

Comment 19

[Scott MacGregor]

Comment on attachment 167722 [details] [diff] [review]
better fix

wrong patch

Comment 20

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: ooops, right patch

Comment 21

[Scott MacGregor]

Comment on attachment 167739 [details] [diff] [review]
ooops, right patch

I haven't tried this new patch out yet though like I did the last one. But the
code change looks good.

Comment 22

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

tested with 200412050x-0.9 on linux fc2 and mac os x 10.3.6:

- if I sort by date-descending, then group by sort, the messages in each group
are now listed in date-descending order (as expected). (conversely,
date-ascending sorting have messages listed in date-ascending order per group.)

- if I sort by other groupable means (Account, Sender/Recepient, Subject,
Priority, Label, Status), the messages in each group are listed in
date-ascending order. I discussed this with David, and this behavior is also
expected.

verifying as fixed!

Comment 23

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

fyi, looks good on Windows too

Comment 24

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 272863 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 25

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 271179 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 26

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

This fix regressed; 1.5.0.4&5, and 2a1-0821, exhibit the original symptom.

Comment 27

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Sorry for the spam: I meant to include the new bug: bug 340307.

Comment 28

[David :Bienvenu]

I just tried my 2.0 debug build - it seems fine to me. For example, if I sort by date descending so that the newest messages are at the top, and then press g, the newest messages in each group are at the top of the group. That's the desired behavior, right? 

Comment 29

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Oh, I see.  The other bug is about clicking the column header *after* grouping; in that case (when sorted by date, anyway) the groups reverse order but the messages remain in the same order within the group.