290803 - Move/copy and keep newsgroup messages and markings

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, enhancement)

Description

[Gudmund Areskoug]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3

A newsgroup is nowadays not only used for news, but is often a knowledge base
with considerable time invested by contributors and users. 

Often, a lot of time is saved for a lot of people, when users make use of TB's
offline storing capabilities along with the features for marking messages with
priority 1-5, flags, watched thread etc for keeping track of conversations and
organizing knowledge.

As of now, messages stored offline are deleted on synchronization once the
messages have expired on the server. When copied, they don't retain all the
markings, so the structure is destroyed.

Also, when a newsgroup is moved, relocated, or has to be resubscribed to, e. g.
when the subscription came in the wrong way, say as secure subscription to a
non-secure newsgroup, it is not possible to simply repoint the subscription, or
to copy/move along the old messages and marking structure to the new
subscription, retaining the work laid down into it.

This could work in a better way, more adapted to how newsgroups are actually
used, or can be used more efficiently.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Subscribe to e. g. netscape.public.mozilla.calendar via secnews.netscape.com
using port 563 and SSL
2. Download and mark a few messages with priorites 1-5, get some for offline
reading, put flags on some, press w to watch some threads, kill one or two
3. Now subscribe to netscape.public.mozilla.calendar via news.mozilla.org using
port 119, no SSL etc.
4. Copy the old messages and index files netscape.public.mozilla.calendar,
netscape.public.mozilla.calendar.dat, netscape.public.mozilla.calendar.msf to
the new account, and see if it works.
5. Try downloading some "new" messages. You'll get everything twice, and no
record is kept of what messages were already downloaded/checked, so you might
have to wade through several tens of thousands of messages all over again...
6. Try substituting "secnews" with "news" inside the files, no go either, just a
worse jumble, with messages getting the wrong sender name in the messages list etc.
Actual Results:  
I tried finding workarounds and confirming the behaviour in corresponding
mozillla newsgroups, then posted this RFE.

Expected Results:  
I should have been able to repoint the NG to the correct subscription, and/or be
able to copy along messages with all markings retained, and TB remembering what
messages had already been downloaded, so it could pick up the tab at the right
place.

Comment 1

[Patrick]

*** Bug 290853 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 3

[Gudmund Areskoug]

This bug still remains, and its lack of comments might perhaps be due to people
affected by it choosing some other newsreader, that has better (i. e. non-lossy)
message archiving capabilities than Thunderbird.

If this and related bugs get removed, I'll just have to file a new one: not
being able to safekeep newsgroup messages in a non-lossy way in Thunderbird is
simply a huge drawback.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

is this doable?