388738 - threads are listed in wrong order

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 254159

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Marek Schimara]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5
Build Identifier: version 2.0.0.4 (20070604)

I have 2 threads; one starting 17/07/2007 15:11 (let's call it "A"), other starting 17/07/2007 17:06 (let's call it "B"). In Thread view, "B" is above "A". If I sort by Date, the first mail from "A" thread is correctly placed above the first mail from "B" thread.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
Threads are not sorted by date, which is confusing. What is the sorting order then??

Expected Results:  
Threads should be sorted by date.

Comment 1

[Marek Schimara]

Attachment: Screenshot showing the problem

Comment 2

[Marek Schimara]

Attachment: A better screenshot

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

See bug 254159 comment 6.

Comment 4

[Marek Schimara]

Well, as far as I understand it, it is still not clear why the higher up thread (B) ended up being where it is, e.g. above the thread (A). 

If you take a look at my attachment, the thread (B) runs from 17/07/2007 17:06 to 18/07/2007 17:49. The thread (A) runs from 17/07/2007 15:11 to 17/07/2007 18:31. So, (A) starts before (B), and it also ends before (B). Therefore (B) is newer than (A) - both first message and last message of (B) are newer than the respective messages of (A). Yet, it is NOT at the bottom of the list.

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yes, that seems wrong... Any chance you can provide the affected threads as a test case? If you can, move/copy them to a separate folder, verify that you still see the bug there. Then go to your profile folder and find the test folder, it's the file without extension you want - then upload it to this bug.

Comment 6

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Well, as far as I understand it, it is still not clear why the higher up thread
> (B) ended up being where it is, e.g. above the thread (A). 

As I wrote in Bug 383985 Comment #6, there are at least 3 bugs which can be observed while thread display. (You can see my confusions by mixture of 3 bugs)
 1. Bug 254159 : Order of main thread.
 2. Bug 262316 : Order in a thread.
 3. Bug 369620 : "View/Sort by"=Date set thru column header(not thru View menu)
                 is resets to "Order Received" when column header to enable 
                 threading is clicked(not thru View menu).
What was exact operation when you observed above phenomenon?

Comment 7

[Marek Schimara]

Unfortunately I can't provide the affected threads, as they contain my work e-mails. I can confirm that this bug is visible when doing View -> Sort By -> Order received (which is the default setting for the folder) and not when doing View -> Sort By -> Date (the threads are then sorted correctly). 

I also confirm that when I have threads in correct order (View -> Sort by -> Date) and
1.) I click on the "Date" tab to sort by date (threaded view gets turned off) 
2.) Then click on the thread tab to switch back to thread view
=> the threads are again incorrectly sorted. As a matter of fact, when looking into the View menu, sorting is reset back to "Order received".

I also tried to copy the 2 threads into a new folder, and I can't reproduce the bug there..?! They are correctly sorted when using either sort by date or sort by order received, even the thread tab works correctly. However, the problem still persists in the original folder.

Comment 8

[Marek Schimara]

(In reply to comment #7)

> I also tried to copy the 2 threads into a new folder, and I can't reproduce the
> bug there..?! They are correctly sorted when using either sort by date or sort
> by order received, even the thread tab works correctly. However, the problem
> still persists in the original folder.
> 

UPDATE: I copied whole original folder into the test folder and the problem is there.

Comment 9

[Marek Schimara]

After reading around, I found a workaround which works for me: Bug 369620 comment #1. I added:

user_pref("mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads", false);

into the file "user.js" and now I'm not forced to use "Order received" anymore. More on the bright side, my threads don't get "unthreaded" when clicking on other sort columns (which is what I always wanted). Yay!!! ;-)

IMHO, this should be the default behavior. By the way, can't this be implemented as an option? Not everybody is familiar with user.js and all the prefs... Personally, if I haven't found it in that bug comment, I would be still stuck with (for me) non-optimal behavior.

Comment 10

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Other bugs found. Bug 264941(Thunderbird) / Bug 388205 (Seamonkey)
> View -> Threads -> "Threads with Unread" changes sorting to "Order Received"
Please be careful in test of theading behavior.

Comment 11

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

One more bug. Bug 181446.
> 181446 – Thread will be broken when child message is followed by parent message if subjects are not the same
See also Bug 389805(dup of Bug 181446) for situation problem occurs.

Comment 12

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

To Marek Schimara(bug opener):
You looks to have successufuly duplicated all problems of pointed bugs...
Please close as DUP. (I think Bug 254159 is most appropriate one.) 

Comment 13

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Re comment 9: the pref now defaults to false.