353036 - "Label is None" custom view lists no messages instead of unlabeled/untagged ['No Tag' filter]

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Search, defect)

Description

[gekacheka]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7
Build Identifier: version 2 beta 1 (20060915)

a. Selecting the View "No Label" produces an empty message list.
Expected message list to contain unlabeled/untagged messages.

(b. Also, expected view to be called "No Tag" since labels are now called tags.)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
0. View | Toolbars | Customize toolbars, drag Mail Views to toolbar
1. Select a folder that contains some unlabeled messages (most folders do)
2. Select view "No Label" (meaning no tag)


Actual Results:  
empty message list
(No errors in Error Console)


Expected Results:  
message list contains all messages that have no label/no tag

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

That's no standard view (I don't have it), and I can't seem to create one.

Comment 2

[gekacheka]

You're right, I forgot I created it (so name "No Label" is not an issue).
Functionality is still an issue.

In TB1.5 it is easy to create this as follows:
  View dropdown (not View menu)
    Customize...
      New ...
        [Label  ] [is   ] [None    ]

(I found it very useful in high volume folders, to label a few messages I wanted to keep for later, then I could use this to list only unlabeled messages and easily select all or a date range to delete the rest.)

In TB2.0 there is no easy way to do this.  A buggy workaround is to create a filter that says 

   Match all of the following:
   [Tags   ] [doesn't contain  ]  [Important  ]
   [Tags   ] [doesn't contain  ]  [To Do      ]
   [Tags   ] [doesn't contain  ]  [Later      ]
   [Tags   ] [doesn't contain  ]  [Personal   ]
   [Tags   ] [doesn't contain  ]  [Work       ]

The problem with this approach is that it is not automatically updated when new tags are added.


The "None" label seems to have been removed from messenger.properties in bug 341173, but there was no discussion of impact on customized views.  (maybe it was overlooked?)


Suggest either:

a. Restore functionality, ability create view of messages with no tag
   [Tags   ] [is      ]  [None        ]
Or

b. Automatically convert "Label is None" views to above workaround to avoid the mysterious problem of this bug.   Or

c. Release note documenting (i) the problem and (ii) the steps necessary to create the workaround, for people who have used the "Label is None" view in 1.5.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Since you can create as many tags you like b) wouldn't work. I think including "tags is none" as an option would be the way to go.

Comment 4

[Karsten Düsterloh]

> The "None" label seems to have been removed from messenger.properties in bug
> 341173, but there was no discussion of impact on customized views.  (maybe it
> was overlooked?)

The former "None" label had nothing to do with the internal state "no labels", it was just a label for the menuitem for removing them. Internally, the former labels were just an integer value, where 0 (coincidentally) symbolized "none" and 1-5 the other values.
The new tags are real strings internally, so there's no real "none" state: removing tag definitions from prefs.js does *not* remove them from tagged messages! So a simple [tags] [is] [<empty string>] will probably fail.

We should have a filter for "hasn't any of the currently known tags", though.

> a. Restore functionality, ability create view of messages with no tag
>    [Tags   ] [is      ]  [None        ]

Yeah. The actual implementation will be harder than in the past, but that should be nothing users should care about. I believe there's already a bug filed on that, dunno its number.

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

xref bug 121214, bug 233364.

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

*** Bug 363962 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[ian]

i experience a crash related to this bug.  it seems to be caused by the "label is none" setting (from my TB1.5 config) not existing in TB2.0.  when i select a saved search that uses the "label is none" criteria, it segfaults.

does this remind anyone of a bug that is already open?  if not, i'll create it.

Comment 12

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

(In reply to comment #11)
> i experience a crash related to this bug.  it seems to be caused by the "label
> is none" setting (from my TB1.5 config) not existing in TB2.0.  when i select a
> saved search that uses the "label is none" criteria, it segfaults.

Can you provide a crash report?

> does this remind anyone of a bug that is already open?  if not, i'll create it.

We have to take a look at the stack trace therefor.

Comment 13

[ian]

ok... what do i do to get a crash report?

Comment 14

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

If you still use a Thunderbird 2.0.0.x version there is Talkback: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Talkback

Comment 15

[Sorin Sbarnea]

Any news regarding this bug? This bug stopping implementing GTD on Thunderbird.

Comment 16

[Karsten Düsterloh]

> Any news regarding this bug?

They'd surely appeared here.

> This bug stopping implementing GTD on Thunderbird.

Throwing TLAs around is of no help either. :-P

Comment 17

[Kent James (:rkent)]

In bug 217034, I am fixing the display of "Doesn't contain" and "Is Empty" to correctly work with tags. So I guess after that, we need to add a "none" field to the tags view, right?

Comment 18

[Patrick Schoenbach]

(In reply to comment #17)
> So I guess after that, we need to add a "none" field to the tags view, right?

Correctly.

Comment 20

[Kent James (:rkent)]

In bug 217034 which has now landed, the IsEmpty function was provided for Tags. On trunk, you can now define a custom view Tags IsEmpty which provides the requested functionality of this bug.

Resolving to FIXED.