536946 - [tagging] user has no way to find out if his tags are "shareable" or not.

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

TB currently does not tell the user where tags are stored, server side or client side. Only if tags are stored on the IMAP server, tags can be shared.

"sharing tags" means that tags are accessible through a different TB profile or by running TB on a different computer (from a different location).

Problem is: from the users point of view it seems like pure chance, whether sharing of tags works or not: on some IMAP servers user sees tags the he has set on a different computer/profile, on other IMAP servers he doesn't.  

Solution:
The user needs to be told whether his IMAP server support storing tags and as such allows for sharing tags.

Technical information:
Tags can only be accessed from different profiles or computers as long as they are stored on the IMAP server. Storing tags in the IMAP server is based on user defined IMAP keywords. If the IMAP server does not support user defined keywords, tags are stored locally. As such they can not be shared.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Tag you messages on an IMAP server NOT supporting user defined keywords.

Actual Results:  
TB *silently* fallbacks to local storage. Tag is stored locally.

Expected Results:  
User should be notified, that tagging is done locally.

The first time user uses tagging, tell him that due to limited IMAP server capabilities tags are stored locally and that tags can not be shared across profiles or accessed on different computers.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

given the user isn't asking for sharing, this may be valid as an outright bug, vs ENH ... esp as it's kind of datalossy

Comment 2

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

Wayne,
  I don't get your point. I think it is the other way round: if the user isn't asking for sharing, he does not care for this bug. 

OTOH if the user is asking for sharing, this can be considered a bug. And then dataloss occurs when the user migrates to a new computer / new profile or rebuilds index ( bug #392510 ).

Comment 3

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

to correct myself: if the tags are not stored on the server ("not shareable"), dataloss always occurs in the cases mentioned above - no matter whether the user wanted to share his tags or not.

Comment 4

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

Want to find out if YOUR tags are "shareable" or not?

Manually connect to IMAP server using telnet!

- see http://bobpeers.com/technical/telnet_imap.php for all the gory details.
- for a secure connection you need openssl

Example conversation:
> telnet imap.server.de 143
< * OK server ready.
> . login username password
< . OK Logged in.
> . select INBOX
< * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
< * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft \*)] Flags permitted.

The \* means that TB can store your tags on the server -> those tags are shareable. Congratulations.

If \* does not appear after PERMANENTFLAGS, you loose. -> your tags will not be shareable.

More details on http://kb.mozillazine.org/Tags