604319 - Threading broken if reference tags are wrong or left out

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Ant]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; it; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10
Build Identifier: 3.1.4

Mails sent by a client that doesn't use or mess some "Reference" tags can't be threaded correctlt by Thunderbird.
The problem is with the sender mail client, but GMail threads them well.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Send an email to someone whose client doesn't support reference tags correctly.
2. Wait his/her reply and view it by thread (View > Group by thread).
3. Reply again to him/her.
Actual Results:  
I have my reply: "Re: some subject". Then I receive "R: Re: some subject" and TB shows this outside the thread. My reply still concat correctly to the last one, with: "Re: R: Re: some subject". Then I will receive "R: Re: R: Re: some subject", again out of any thread. 

Expected Results:  
I understand this is not a problem with Thunderbird, but the same thread looks ok in GMail. I'd like TB to use the same way to thread emails.

Filed this idea on GetSatisfaction:
http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/is_there_any_way_to_repair_rebuild_broken_threads

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Did you play with the threading preferences as documented at https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Message_Threading#Preferences_Controlling_Threading ?

Comment 2

[alta88]

Attachment: testcase.

attached is a test case confirming a serious issue of unviewable messages due to bad references processing logic in Tb threading.  the file contains 5 messages, the 4th has as its final reference the messageId of the 5th; neither the 4th nor 5th is visible.

changing the messageId of the 5th, or removing the last reference of the 4th, makes both visible.  Tb should never fail this way regardless of the failings of the issuing MUA.

(i use TotalMessage for easy editing).

i came across this since i am adding single message dnd rethreading/unthreading to TM; unless the messageId of the rethreaded message is changed or all messages parsed and references to moving messageId cleansed, rethreading deep threaded messages won't be easy.

Comment 3

[Ant]

(In reply to Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul] from comment #1)
> Did you play with the threading preferences as documented at
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:
> Message_Threading#Preferences_Controlling_Threading ?

I've just changed every single option of the three shown: the problem is always there. It's not so easy to test because you have to find someone using a "bad" mail provider, but I think that changing those options in the editor should apply to old threads also.

Comment 4

[abonnements]

I have the same issue. Some threads are broken in Thunderbird, but look fine in the mailman archive.
Compare the thread "[PD] Jackpilot/Soundflower mauricemoncozet" in the archive of this public list https://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2019-10/thread.html
while in Thunderbird it is broken in 4 different threads. It looks like this: https://send.firefox.com/download/3f90783116ee1e09/#waTVU-Q59KLXkmq2VMQYMw
Note that every email sent by Dan Wilcox starts a new thread in Thunderbird.