533792 - Use messageid in messages storage avoid "All Mail" stays bold even if I read all my email.

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

Description

[adamsch1]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5
Build Identifier: 

I use IMAP+gmail.  I am one of those users who has to have his inbox fully read.  I read all my mail and the "All Mail" icon stays bold.  It eventually unbolds however but it takes a while.  

Its annoying cause I keep going - ok do am I somehow missing an email?  Is a filter I created messed up so I'm loosing mail?  Every time I check its an email I have already read.


Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
I would expect it to bold/unbold in step with my inbox icon or however just don't have that lag :)

Comment 1

[Ralph]

This is also an issue with SeaMonkey 2.1.. very annoying and in my case they never go as "read". If I manually change them they do.. till the next time I open SeaMonkey and they are back bold again

Comment 2

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #0)
> I use IMAP+gmail.  I am one of those users who has to have his inbox fully
> read.  I read all my mail and the "All Mail" icon stays bold.  It eventually
> unbolds however but it takes a while.  

For IMAP client(Tb), Gmail IMAP folder of "[Gmail]/All Mail" is absolutely different/independent from Gmail IMAP folder of "Inbox".
So, "mark as read at Inbox" is also absolutely different/independent from Gmail IMAP folder of "[Gmail]/All Mail" which is accessed by Tb.
However, it can be said that Gmail/Gmail IMAP keeps "read/unread status of a mail" in single copy of mail in "[Gmail]/All Mail". So, it can be said that "mark as read at Inbox" is propagated to single copy in "[Gmail]/All Mail" sooner or later, or immediately.

IMAP client can know the status change only when next access to "[Gmail]/All Mail" folder, or when new mail notification from IMAP server via IDLE.
Further, time of "sooner or later, or immediately" depends on Gmail/Gmail IMAP server and their status(sometimes delays due to busy, sometimes delays due to bug).

(In reply to comment #1)
> and they are back bold again

If new mail arrives in Inbox with unread status, or a mail is marked as unread in a Gmail IMAP folder(==Gmail Label), it's propagated to "[Gmail]/All Mail" by Gmail sooner or later, or immediately(single copy of mail data is kept in "[Gmail]/All Mail").

If you think your problem is caused by Tb's fault, get IMAP log with timestamp, and attach log file if and only if Tb's fault is seen in the log. (never paste, please).
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging
> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/nspr/reference/html/prlog.html#25328
> SET NSPR_LOG_MODULES=imap:5,timestamp

Comment 3

[Ralph]

Resolved the problem on my system by..
Correcting the setting in Preferences > Message display > and "check" Automatically mark messages as read.

The obvious place to have looked for at the start... but this is a setting that did not migrate with the upgrade from SM 1.xx

Comment 4

[Michael Jones]

If I understand the original poster's complaint, I have this same problem.

I have multiple IMAP accounts in use in Thunderbird 3.1. One of them is my personal Gmail account. The behaviour I observe is that new mail in Gmail is received in both Inbox, and Archives (Where Archives is the folder pointing to gmail/All Mail). IMHO, this behaviour is correct. Gmail automatically stores all email in All Mail, including the email currently in the Inbox. 

However, when I then go and read the email that is in my inbox, Thunderbird 3.1 correctly marks the email in my inbox as read. However, the email in "Archives" (Which, for my Gmail account, points to All Mail), does not reflect this same case. If I then click Get Mail, which (I believe) scans through for changes in my accounts, this (sometimes) fixes it. (I believe that it doesn't due to some other potential problems. One of these may be between keyboard and chair).

If I explicitly open the archive folder and go to the one unread message. The message is always the same email that I just read in my Inbox. 

This tells me that if (As I suspect) Thunderbird is treating my gmail All Mail folder and my Inbox folder as entirely separate folders, that the email being read is not reflected in the All Mail folder, because according to Thunderbird's internal conceptualization of the account, those ARE different messages, and I've not actually read the one in All Mail.

However!!! From a user experience standpoint, this is, TBH, quite annoying. I can't stand having unread email in my mailboxes. (Call me obsessive compulsive if you need to). So, when I read email in my Inbox, and see the same email in my Archive folder still not marked as read, its honestly quite annoying. 

I suppose there are multiple ways to fix this. One might be that instead of storing the email twice, emails that are in both the inbox and all mail folder could instead be stored in the inbox, and then transparently mapped back to the all mail folder on display. Another way is that whenever the user reads an email in a gmail inbox, Thunderbird scans through the archives and finds that same email (Since we know it must exist!) and then marks that as unread. I wouldn't even particularly mind it if Thunderbird simply decremented the number of emails that are unread in the archive whenever an inbox message is marked as read. All three of these would fix the user experience issue we are experiencing.


Further information:

I have multiple computers, with Thunderbird set up on each in the same manner. Fedora 12 x64 (Office Workstation). Ubuntu 10.04 x64 (Personal desktop). Ubuntu 10.04 x386 (Personal Laptop). Windows 7 x64 (Personal desktop, dualbooted).

All of these Thunderbird installs have three accounts.
IMAP server for my work.
Exchange server for school.
Gmail, for personal email. 

The problem ONLY shows up for gmail. Removing the gmail account, and any other combination of email accounts that I've tried are consistent with the problem only happening for Gmail.


Thanks!!

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I'm not sure what we can do about this, if anything. Guessing this would be backend

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

That was interesting - eventually All Mail did sync up with the state of Inbox.

So maybe this is WFM?

Comment 7

[gene smith]

I just checked this. I had a recent unread message in gmail Inbox. The unread count on Inbox is X and the unread count on All Mail is Y. I then read the message in Inbox and the unread count on Inbox went to X-1 and the unread count on All Mail went to Y-1. There was minimal delay in seeing the unread count (number in bold) go down on All Mail. On accessing All Mail, the previously unread message in Inbox is now marked as read in All Mail and I didn't read any message in All Mail to cause this.
Restarting tb, the unread counts are still X-1 and Y-1.
So, to me and at this time, this bug seems INVALID. (The functionality for this is handled by the gmail server for the most part, I think.)

Comment 8

[gene smith]

Well, it just occurred to me it is probably IDLE (immediate notification) causing the All Mail unread count to update. So without IDLE enabled on All Mail (not recently clicked on) you may have to click on All Mail to see the update or set tb to check All Mail for new mail on biff interval.

Comment 9

[Matt]

Thunderbird will be relying on updating the all mail via IMAP. There is no real inherent connection between individual messages and their gmail labels within Thunderbird. I would say that this should be WFM or a dup of Bug 43278 Personally I lean towards Bug 43278 despite it being an NNTP bug as Thunderbird with the advent of file per message should be looking to messageid for message storage, not per folder storage. All instances of a messageid should have the same status.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I think this bug needs to stand on its own, that Bug 43278 may have unique issues.
Should this bug block maildir meta bug 845952? (I've made it related for now)

Comment 11

[Matt]

I don't see it as a blocker for maildir Wayne, just something that would be nice. MBOX does not manage it any better.