531317 - Feature Request: "Sort/Group by conversation" in message list

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[Philipp A. Hechter]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.15) Gecko/2009102815 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.15
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091121 Thunderbird/3.0

Thunderbird 3 RC1 offers the possibility to view the conversation of a single message via the new "other actions"/"show in conversation"-menu. However, it is not possible to group the whole message list by conversations (similar to what Gmail does in the web front-end).

Currently, as far as I can judge, a "thread" is not the same as a "conversation". Threads are grouped by subject, conversations by the reference IDs in the mail header, -- am I right? Grouping by "subject" is possible via the menu "View"/"Sort by"/"Threaded", grouping by "conversation" isn't supported, but would be desirable.

Reasons: Grouping by subject is especially annoying when mails have the same subject, but have almost no correlation. For instance: automated wordpress-"you have a new comment"-mails have the same subject even though they happen independently from each other in terms of date/time and blog entries.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

That's covered in MailNews Core bug 241197, thus duping.

Comment 2

[David Ascher (:davida)]

I don't think it makes sense to dupe this Thunderbird bug as a dupe of mailnews core bug.  This is as UI a bug as it gets, and I wouldn't be surprised if Seamonkey didn't want what Thunderbird wanted to do.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

[not General]

are backend bits already there? If so, bug 241197 can move to UI.

Comment 4

[rsx11m]

Feel free to reopen if that was the wrong thing to do. There was another Thunderbird bug duped against that bug, and the backend implementation has
to be there first (which could be done in either mail/ or mailnews/).

Comment 5

[David Ascher (:davida)]

The backend code is gloda.  At this point I think all that's left is UI.

Comment 6

[Philipp A. Hechter]

So what's the outcome now? What's going to happen with this?

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

(In reply to comment #0)
> 
> Currently, as far as I can judge, a "thread" is not the same as a
> "conversation". Threads are grouped by subject, conversations by the reference
> IDs in the mail header, -- am I right?

In the Thunderbird 3.0 context, threads and conversations are the same thing, and both use the reference headers; we don't thread messages with the same non re: subject together by default, but you do need to rebuild the indexes to see the change.

Comment 8

[Philipp A. Hechter]

(In reply to comment #7)
> In the Thunderbird 3.0 context, threads and conversations are the same thing,
> and both use the reference headers; we don't thread messages with the same non
> re: subject together by default, but you do need to rebuild the indexes to see
> the change.

Yes, you're right. TB definitely groups messages by 'References' header in most cases, but it also groups some messages even if they don't match in terms of message ID/References-header.

If two mails
- have no 'References'-header
- have the same sender ('From' ?!)
- and have the same subject
they are grouped in one thread even though they might not have anything to do with each other. Is that desirable?

Example: Wordpress comments-notifications or simply mails form the same sender with the '(no subject)'-subject ...

I find it a bit disturbing when TB groups a mail from today with another mail from 2 months ago only because they have the same subject... It doesn't happen with all the mails though. I haven't been able to figure out the exact circumstances. Can anyone confirm this behaviour?

Comment 9

[Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] (he/him)]

The message threading preferences and ramifications are detailed here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Message_Threading

Please check your effective preferences values for the preferences documented there.

Also, please confirm that the mis-threading you are observing is with "View... Sort By... Threaded" selected; your problem is slightly ambiguous since we do support grouping by subject (where "View... Sort By... Grouped" and "View... Sort By... Subject" are both selected).  You have to select grouping by sort after sorting by the subject rather than the opposite because changing the sort disables grouping.

If your preferences aren't set such that you should be observing the common threading of the wordpress notifications, please state the current value of the preferences and attach two example messages that exhibit the behaviour.

Comment 10

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Since threads and conversations are the same, this is a request for sort by thread? If so, wfm... If not, i what's the difference?

Comment 11

[Philipp A. Hechter]

Attachment: Blog mail / friend mail examples

(In reply to comment #9)

> Please check your effective preferences values for the preferences documented
> there.

mail.correct_threading;true
mail.strict_threading;true
mail.thread_without_re;false

> Also, please confirm that the mis-threading you are observing is with "View...
> Sort By... Threaded" selected; your problem is slightly ambiguous since we do
> support grouping by subject (where "View... Sort By... Grouped" and "View...
> Sort By... Subject" are both selected).  You have to select grouping by sort
> after sorting by the subject rather than the opposite because changing the sort
> disables grouping.
>
> If your preferences aren't set such that you should be observing the common
> threading of the wordpress notifications, please state the current value of the
> preferences and attach two example messages that exhibit the behaviour.

I think you misunderstood: I do not want the messages to be grouped by subject, but rather by conversation. And as I said, it works for most mails, but not for wordpress notifications ...

My settings are: Sort by Date, Threaded


Examples are attached:
A) These two wordpress mails are grouped even though they don't belong together.
B) These two mails are both from the same sender and are grouped even though they do not have a a matching reference id / message id.

Regards,
Philipp

Comment 12

[David :Bienvenu]

Have you tried rebuilding the index?

Comment 13

[Philipp A. Hechter]

That worked. Thank you David. Everything looks fine now.

Sorry guys for the hold up, but apparently the feature already exists and works like a charm (after rebuilding the index) :-D