504026 - New message status for individual messages lost after reviewing other folders

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Venkat]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5
Build Identifier: 2.0.0.22pre

Hi,

I find that new messages lose the new-message status, and get to become plan unread messages after one of the following is done:

- Move to folders other than the one where the messages are new (reviewing other folders etc.)
- Closing TB and reopening it

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Straight-forward


Expected Results:  
New message tag has to be preserved until the message is actually read

Comment 1

[Kent James (:rkent)]

"- Move to folders other than the one where the messages are new (reviewing
other folders etc.)"

This is the difference between New and Unread, and is the design behavior, and generally agreed as the main point of the New flag.

"- Closing TB and reopening it"

This is also by design, but is more controversial. I don't like this behavior, nor do the majority of people I have asked about it. But others do, and there are ease of implementation reasons why this is done.

The other case where New changes is when you manually ask for new messages - which is another controversial way that I don't agree with.

So this bug should probably be closed as WONTFIX. What the reporter requests is that the New flag behave just like Unread - so why do we need the new flag? Just use unread.

Comment 2

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #0)
> I find that new messages lose the new-message status, and get to become plan
> unread messages after one of the following is done:
> - Move to folders other than the one where the messages are new (reviewing
> other folders etc.)
> - Closing TB and reopening it

IMAP? Local mail folders(POP3, "Local Folders" as Global Inbox)?

I'm not sure but I think "the new-message status" corresponds to \Recent flag when IMAP. If IMAP, read explanation about \Recent flag in RFC 3501, please. 
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-2.3.2
> 2.3.2. Flags Message Attribute
>        \Seen
>           Message has been read
>(snip)
>        \Recent
>           Message is "recently" arrived in this mailbox.

It's possible to keep \Recent flag locally until user reads the mail.
But it's useless if same IMAP account is accessed from multiple PC(multiple Thunderbird), because \Recent flag is passed to only single Thunderbird instance who opens the mail folder first after arrival of the mail.
And, "keeping different status" produces problem due to mismatch between local data and server data in many cases.
So I think Tb simply displays \Recent flag held at IMAP server as "the new-message status".

Comment 3

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

"Tag" of Thunderbird has independent meaning and is different from "new-message status". Venkat(bug opener), can you change "New message tag" in bug summary to "New message status" like comment #0, to avoid confusion and for ease of search?

Comment 4

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Changing "tag" in bug summary to "status" to reduce probability of misleading.
Sorry for threaded-view lovers.

Comment 5

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

Venkat have you observed this issue also in last 2.0.0.23 release?

What you think about comment #1 and comment #2, please?

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

->WONTFIX per comment 1