290853 - Move/copy and retain newsgroup messages and markings

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 290803

(Thunderbird :: General, 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

[zug_treno]

Duplicate of Bug 290803.

Comment 2

[Patrick]

duping

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 290803 ***