522212 - Tags reorder themselves

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[Sam]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009091010 Iceweasel/3.0.6 (Debian-3.0.6-3)
Build Identifier: 20090812

Tags seem to reorder themselves after a short while. 

For example, we have two tags which state "To Read" and "To Action". 

We follow these by name tags such as "David" and "Bob". 

The full tag list should read "To Read" "David" "To Action" "Bob" (note the tags do not have quotes). 

Instead, after refreshing the mail folder/restarting tbird, Tbird reorders the tags to read "To Read" "To Action" "David" "Bob".

This does not appear to be regarding alphabetical order. I have made each tag "Read" and "Action" in case the multiple words was throwing it off, but this did not help. 



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. add tags "to read" "to action" and "Bob" and "David"
2. tag message with "to read" "David" "to action" "Bob" in that order
3. select different IMAP folder/restart Tbird. 
Actual Results:  
The tags will have reordered. 

Expected Results:  
Should have stayed in the order they were applied.

I have tried using Tbird addon Mail Tweak and the issue still persists.

Comment 1

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6pre) Gecko/20091110 Shredder/3.0pre

I see this too. 

I guess this is by design. 

As soon as you reload the message, tags in message pane are ordered by tag priority. 

Tag priority is defined by the order of tags as displayed in Options | Display | Tags pane.

Comment 2

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

Currently there is no way (not that I know) to reorder tags, see bug #528034.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

protz, bienvenu, we can consider this, and bug 528034 to be not feasible?

Comment 4

[Jonathan Protzenko [:protz]]

Well there's simply no concept of ordering over tags and this would require significant rework to make sure tags are kept in the same order. It seems to me like we have bigger priorities right now, unfortunately. We would of course gladly consider a patch.

Comment 5

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

We could make it easier to add new tags (like how Firefox does for bookmarks). Then you could just add "To Read: David" as a new tag. That seems like a better way to handle this.

We may also want to sort the tags alphabetically when displaying them, to make it easier to skim the list.

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Jim Porter (:squib) from comment #5)
> We could make it easier to add new tags (like how Firefox does for
> bookmarks). Then you could just add "To Read: David" as a new tag. That
> seems like a better way to handle this.

+1. That's Bug 370076 filed in 2007 and advocated for by me since 2009.
Would make tags by order of magnitudes more useful.

> We may also want to sort the tags alphabetically when displaying them, to
> make it easier to skim the list.

I've also suggested that many times as a default (to end the current unpredictable sorting ux), notwithstanding more sophisticated ways of user-defined sorting. See e.g. Bug 368084 Comment 15, Bug 528034 Comment 15. Unfortunately, some involved persons are not able to identify the major ux-shortcomings of the current tagging UI given that the number of tags is unlimited, and more so if we'll implement "free-style" tagging on-the-fly a la Firefox as Jim proposes in comment 5.