419368 - Filter actions after copy to folder applied to copies as well as originals

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement)

Description

[Curtis Jackson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/523.15.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Safari/523.15
Build Identifier: version 2.0.0.9 (20071031)

When I use a "copy to folder" action in a message filter, I do not expect subsequent filter actions to apply to the copies, but rather only to the original message.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a message filter whose first action is "copy to folder"
2. Add one or more later actions such as tag or set priority to. (I'll use tag for this example)
3. Run the filter.
Actual Results:  
Both the original message and the copies from the copy to folder action get tagged.

Expected Results:  
This is very counterintuitive. If I wanted to tag both the original and the copy, I would order my actions tag, copy to folder. When the filter's action order is copy to folder, tag, I do not expect the copy to get tagged, only the original.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Confirming on linux/trunk.

Comment 2

[:aceman]

Does this still exist in TB 8 - 11 ?

Comment 3

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Confusing but application order of filter actions is currently differet from order of actions shown in message filter UI.
(1) Priority-1 : actions which are irrelevant to copy of mail/move of mail/delete of mail from downloaded Inbox(there is sub priorities in this class).
(2) Priority-2 : actions which are not relevant to move/delete of mail from downloaded Inbox(i.e. copy)
(3) Priority-3 : actions which is for move/delete of mail from downloaded Inbox(i.e. move/delete, which stops further application of other rules, because mail is deleted/moved from downloaded Inbox folder by the action).

I believe such priority should be explicitly shown to user in message filter editing UI, or application of actions should be done in order of actions user requested(stopping by move/delete acion should be expliitely shown to user), but it's currently not.

Comment 4

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI. Order of message filter actions.
> http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/base/search/src/nsMsgFilter.cpp?force=1#317
> 317 // The order of actions returned by this method:
> 318 //   index    action(s)
> 319 //  -------   ---------
> 320 //     0      FetchBodyFromPop3Server
> 321 //    1..n    all other 'normal' actions, in their original order
> 322 //  n+1..m    CopyToFolder
> 323 //    m+1     MoveToFolder or Delete
> 324 //    m+2     StopExecution

Comment 5

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Apparently, never flaw in Tb's code, as it works as designed.
INVALID, if it works as designed and the current design/implementation is proper,
WONTFIX, if no need of design/implementation change/improvement,
ENHANCEMENT, if some improvements are needed.

Comment 6

[:aceman]

I can confirm the reported problem still happens in TB11 if Copy is anywhere in the filter operations.

The order of actions in comment 4 would actually confirm it. All the other actions are done first (regardless of their order in the filter definition) and the resulting message is then copies. So the 2 copies are identical, with all changes applied.
Maybe it works as designed, but the reported use case is valid. It could be wanted for the copies to be different. So it would mean Enhancement.

Comment 7

[:aceman]

Also, since TB21 the user is presented with the order the actions will be executed in, directly in the filter editor UI. See bug 747284.