394944 - Eudora corrupts Thunderbird inbox display order

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Penelope Graveyard :: Preferences, defect, P5)

Description

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: 8.0b1

After installing and playing with Eudora 8.0b1 I went back to Thunderbird. Somehow, Eudora had reset some of my display preferences. Columns in the Inbox window are in a different order, with different wiodths, and some things I didn't show at all in TB are now shown. 

It is now in the order (from left-to-right)

1. Status
2. Priority
3. Attachments
4. Sender
5. Tag
6. Date
7. Size
8. Junk status
9. Subject

I don't think I used to show all of these, and I certainly didn't have them in this order. It feels very weird. Aside form column width I can't seem to figure out how to switch them back to what I used to have.

In any case, running Eudora should not change my TB views. Eudora needs to be more cleanly separated from Thunderbird, possibly with different preference files and perhaps even mail stores. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[senway]

I can attest to this as well.  I nearly had a heart attack once I opened TB to find everything jumbled.  

There is a way to set the columns back to their "default" arrangement (although that may not match what you originally had) - there is a column header at the far right, should be sitting above your vertical scroll bar.  Click it to see a list of all available columns to display.  At the bottom of the list there is an option to "Restore Natural Order".  

After that, if you still aren't satisfied, you can click and drag each column header to rearrange its place.

Comment 2

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

Thanks you. That does enable me to restore TB to some semblance of where I had it before.

Point still remains, that this shouldn't have happened. TB and Eudora really should share preferences. 

Comment 3

[Matt Dudziak]

Thunderbird and Eudora are essentially the same application. Eudora has a few features and a 'skin' that Thunderbird does not, but otherwise they are the same code base.

At this point I don't think we have any plans to use separate data from Thunderbird... 

I'll leave this open if you want to vote for this bug. Enough votes and we'll consider your request.

Matt

Comment 4

[Elliotte Rusty Harold]

There's a bug here even if they use the same preferences. I never told Eudora to change my display order. It just did it. If TB and Eudora will share the same preferences, then Eudora should respect those when it starts up or in some cases ignore them. However it should not unilaterallly rewrite the prefs, just because I launched it. 

Comment 5

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #3)
> At this point I don't think we have any plans to use separate data from Thunderbird... 

This bug is Thunderbird & Eudra version of profile sharing problem between Mozilla/Seamonky & Netscape 6/7.

Because Netscape 6/7 uses same directory for profile, and all data format(not content) is compatible, both software can use profile for another software. This caused several problems. These were not so easy to resolve for users once problem occurred. I could find 2 such bugs - Bug 101968 and Bug 137164.
So "Release Notes" of all version of Mozilla/Seamonkey had to/have to/will have to have description of "Don't share profile with Netscape 6/7" after release of Netscape 6.
 http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/releases/seamonkey1.1.4/
 > End User Documentation
 >(snip)
 >   If Netscape 6/7 is installed
 http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/guide/get-started.html#previous-netscape7
This problem was resolved by Netscape 8, by changing profile location to different one from Mozilla family.

I hope that Eudra and Thunderbird can share profile/data, and I hoe that I can use same profile/mail server/mail data by Eudra&Tb alternately, like switching of Theme of Thunderbird.
However, it is impossible because at least message filter is incompatible until both Tb and Eudra will have capability of dynamic filter translation.

To Matt Dudziak:   
Is there any plan to implement such feature for profile/data compatibility and/or profile/data sharing?
If no, please consider preventing of profile sharing or different profile location as Netscape 8 did. 

Comment 6

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI.
Profile directory name change from "mozilla.org" to "Mozilla" happened on Seamonkey trunk nightly recently.
  http://wiki.mozilla.org/SeaMonkey:Moving_Profiles_from_mozilla.org_to_Mozilla
This is due to internal vender ID change from "mozilla.org" to "Mozilla".
So I think internal vender ID change from "Thunderbird" to "Eudra" will change profile location, although other works will also be required.

Comment 7

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI. #2
According to above wiki, I changed "Name=Thunderbird" line to "Name=Eudra" in application.ini file of Thunderbird trunk 2007/10/05 build.
Tb with "Name=Eudra" created directory of "Eudra" for profile directory, and already existing "Thunderbird" directory was not used.
Current Eudra beta(Eudra 8.0.0b1) seems to have removed or disabled this application.ini support.

Comment 8

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI. #3
>Thunderbird trunk nightly 2007/10/05 build, MS Win-XP SP2 
> application.ini
>  [App]
>  Vendor=MyCompany  <= Added. Tb doesn't have this line. See Seamonkey's ini. 
>  Name=Eudra        <= Changed from Name=Thunderbird
Profile was created under %APPDATA%\MyCompany\Eudra directory.

Comment 9

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI. #4
See Bug 247973 Comment #9, and see patch sample attached by Mscott for module who defines above Vendor and Name.
I think both Vendor & Name are better to be set appropriately from initial, in order to avoid problem such as Bug 247973 after release of official version.

Comment 10

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

Penelope didn't see any activity in the vcs for the last 8 years, closing.