79988 - change default for newsgroups to be configured for offline use

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, enhancement)

Description

[Mark Slater]

Build: 2001050915, Win32-installer

Each time a usenet message is selected, it will be downloaded from the server,
regardless of whether it's been downloaded before. Shouldn't the post (including
any attachments) be cached?

Reproducibility: every time

Steps to reproduce:
1. Visit any usenet group
2. Read any message
3. Close mailnews
4. Restart mailnews, revisit usenet group
5. Click on already read message

actual results:
Although the message has already been read, it is downloaded from the server again.

expected results:
moznews should've cached the message the first time, then pull it from the cache
on subsequent reading of the same message.


I looked for the bug on this to check if it's already been reported, as it seems
such an obvious bug. Couldn't find it tho :(

Comment 1

[David Hallowell]

I don't think this is all hooked up yet, did it work before?
I can force it to download all the messages by selecting the folder for download
and going offline, but I can't get it to work the way you expect it to work
(which it probably should)

confirming

Comment 2

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

closing down mailnews is probably releasing / clearing out the cache.

that might be by design.

Comment 3

[WD]

Outlook Express keeps a database file of Newsgroup articles.   That way only 
new, unread messages are needed to be downloaded.   Is it possible for MailNews 
to do that?   Would make things work much faster.

Comment 4

[Mark Slater]

wdormann: actually, that's exactly what i was trying to get at with my initial 
comment on the bug :)

Comment 5

[Mark Slater]

Seth: Actually, my initial "Steps to reproduce" was a bit misleading. Try this:

1) Select news post (download, read)
2) Select next news post (download, read)
3) Select news post read in number 1, and it will download it again

Comment 6

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

we have a news cache.  it seems to be working for me on news.mozilla.org

is your news account on a server that requires authentication?

Comment 7

[Mark Slater]

Actually, i was testing this on news.mozilla.org. every time i choose an 
article, it gets downloaded again. on articles with attachments i have to wait 
for a long time for it to appear, with mozilla obviously connecting to the 
server and downloading the post.

Comment 8

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

do you have any special cache settings?

Edit | Prefs | Advanced | Cache

Comment 9

[Mark Slater]

I don't think so, altho i don't have the latest build here at home (i reported 
this bug from work, where i got the latest available win32 build). But it has 
ALWAYS appeared that way for me. click on message - download. regardless of 
build, regardless of whether i'd read the message beforehand or not.

Comment 10

[WD]

Never mind...  News cacheing works for me.

Comment 11

[David :Bienvenu]

we only cache messages less than 50K, I believe. I suspect this bug is invalid.

Comment 12

[Mark Slater]

Okok, how about a preference for message cache then? Re-Downloading larger 
messages really isn't that much fun, especially for ppl who don't have 
permanent high-bandwidth connections...

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

you know, I lied about there being a 50K limit to the size of messages we put in
the memory cache (the memory cache is limited to 1MB, I think) - I was thinking
of the offline cache. This might be a dup of or related to a bug mscott recently
fixed having to do with whether we would get attachments from the memory cache.

Comment 14

[David :Bienvenu]

wait a minute - are you expecting us to cache the message bodies and retain them
after you shut down the app? If so, you need to tell us to do that by selecting
the newsgroup for offline use. We don't do it by default (which is not a bug).

Comment 15

[Mark Slater]

OK, that's exactly what I meant. So if that's not a bug, maybe an RFE? Because 
for everyday users, they'll look at outlook express, and, comparing it to 
mozilla mailnews, they'll think OE performs better because it keeps all the 
downloaded messages.

I have a funny feeling there's a bug lurking somewhere where this has all been 
discussed in great detail already...

Comment 16

[David :Bienvenu]

at the cost of eating up disk space - OK, I'll change it to an RFE and move it
to future.

Comment 17

[Jacek Piskozub]

Reopening and changing severity to Enhancement. I believe that is what you meant
by changing it to RFE.

Comment 18

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, sorry, that is what I meant to do.

Comment 19

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

*** Bug 90939 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[Corey Rogers]

I had searched but didnt find this bug because I was loking for the word "saved"
and not "cached." Anyway I'm a bit worried about the Target Milestone: FUTURE.

I think this is very important especially if anyone is going to use mozilla as a
all in one internet application, especially a news reader. 56ks are quite common
and mozilla is already too slow at downloading both mail and news to have to go
through this all the time.

A milestone of no later than 1.0 would be best. Afterall the final version
should be feature complete with regards to all basic features and this is one
such basic feature.

Comment 21

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

*** Bug 90934 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 22

[Martin Sch]

See also bug 178594 and bug 176740

Comment 24

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

Worthwhile: probably
Difficult: probably not too hard
Status: I doubt bienvenu's working on it
Priority: Low, I'm afraid.

Comment 25

[David :Bienvenu]

all this would mean is changing the default for newsgroups to be "configured for offline use", which is trivial.

Comment 26

[David :Bienvenu]

changing summary - once Emre's on idle compact stuff is done, these newsgroup offline stores should be compacted on idle as well.

Comment 27

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

But wouldn't that try to sync them when going offline too? That could be ok too at times, but very slow if you're in a hurry.

Comment 28

[David :Bienvenu]

we don't do any kind of auto sync when you go offline, unless you ask us to...

Comment 29

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yes, I meant if I want it for mails, but not all my low-priority newsgroups that could take many minutes to dl :)