Thunderbird -OT

Sorry about the off-topic question, but I don't know where else to ask this.

I'm been trying Thunderbird 68.2.1 as my newsreader, rather than Agent,
which I used to use. I like some things about Thunderbird better than
Agent and some less, so I haven't yet decided which to stick with. But I
have a Thunderbird question:

A cross-posted message is showing up in each folder I open that it's
been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it appear only once? If so,
what should I change to make that happen.

--
Ken

Ken Blake wrote:
Sorry about the off-topic question, but I don't know where else to ask
this.

I'm been trying Thunderbird 68.2.1 as my newsreader, rather than Agent,
which I used to use. I like some things about Thunderbird better than
Agent and some less, so I haven't yet decided which to stick with. But I
have a Thunderbird question:

A cross-posted message is showing up in each folder I open that it's
been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it appear only once? If so,
what should I change to make that happen.

The only way I know to do that is to create a filter for your account
server for that post.

On 11/2/19 6:47 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:
Sorry about the off-topic question, but I don't know where else to ask
this.

I'm been trying Thunderbird 68.2.1 as my newsreader, rather than Agent,
which I used to use. I like some things about Thunderbird better than
Agent and some less, so I haven't yet decided which to stick with. But I
have a Thunderbird question:

A cross-posted message is showing up in each folder I open that it's
been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it appear only once? If so,
what should I change to make that happen.

The only way I know to do that is to create a filter for your account
server for that post.


That is the only way I can think of either.

Doubles in two groups don't bug me.

I use the "Tag" option the color threads I am following.
I just tag only one group so I ignore the other.

Ken Blake wrote:

Sorry about the off-topic question, but I don't know where else to ask this.

I'm been trying Thunderbird 68.2.1 as my newsreader, rather than Agent,
which I used to use. I like some things about Thunderbird better than
Agent and some less, so I haven't yet decided which to stick with. But I
have a Thunderbird question:

A cross-posted message is showing up in each folder I open that it's
been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it appear only once? If so,
what should I change to make that happen.

Thunderbird newsgroup: mozilla.support.thunderbird
Mozilla NNTP server: news.mozilla.org, port 119

I doubt you can have a newsgroup omitted in one newsgroup when visiting
another newsgroup to which it was cross-posted. After all, hiding would
depend on which newsgroup you visited first to then hide in the other
newsgroup(s) which you might or might not visit. Also, just because
someone decides to cross-post to multiple newsgroups doesn't mean
everyone who replies must also post to the same group of newsgroups.
Users might decide to send their reply only to the newsgroups they know
or the ones they visit, not to someplace they don't know and don't go,
especially if cross-posting involves unrelated or garbage newsgroups.
You'd read an article with its replies in one newsgroup but hiding that
article in another newsgroup means not seeing the separate replies over
there. No one has to cross-post their replies to the same newsgroups
the prior user decided to cross-post to.

At best, and if Thunderbird supports it, an article that you read in one
newsgroup could be marked as read when you visit another newsgroup to
which the article was cross-posted. Cross-posting has only 1 copy of an
article on a server but with multiple pointers to the same article. The
Message-ID (MID) header to identify the article will be the same in all
cross-posted newsgroups. Seeing that an article's MID is the same as a
another article's MID in another group (and which was read) means the
client would have to retain all MIDs for every article it ever
retrieved. That would be a huge database requiring lots of lookups that
would slow the client in management the articles in separate newsgroups.

On 11/2/19 8:05 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
At best, and if Thunderbird supports it, an article that you read in one
newsgroup could be marked as read when you visit another newsgroup to
which the article was cross-posted.

That used to work, years ago, is my understanding. But Mozilla either
broke it or deleted the functionality. I don't know which.

--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 69.0.2
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Ken Blake wrote:
Sorry about the off-topic question, but I don't know where else to ask
this.

I'm been trying Thunderbird 68.2.1 as my newsreader, rather than Agent,
which I used to use. I like some things about Thunderbird better than
Agent and some less, so I haven't yet decided which to stick with. But I
have a Thunderbird question:

A cross-posted message is showing up in each folder I open that it's
been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it appear only once? If so,
what should I change to make that happen.


As far as I know, that's the way it has always worked.

There is no de-dup on crossposts.

Each "box" is its own database file.

*******

You can even find in places like Wikipedia, statements that
"the developers want to change from Mork database to Sqlite
for the box structure", but they never seem to get around to it.
They've been promising that since version 2 or 3 or so.
If you look at Mork, can't say I blame them. It's the
translation process (figuring out what the lines of code
in the Mork section are actually doing), which would be
a bitch.

There is a Mork dumper written in Python, and this is a taste
of what a thread looks like in there. I think I installed
a copy of Python on one of my Windows installs, so I could
run the dumper.

namespace,id,children,k,s,threadId,threadNewestMsg Date,threadRoot,unreadChildren
,,,ns:msg:db:table:kind:thread,9,,,,
m,103,1,,,1765,06/17/14 08:10:08,1765,0
----------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all :: 240F
----------------------------------------------------------------------
namespace,id,date,flags,message-id,msgThreadId,numLines,numRefs,references,sender, size,subject,threadParent
ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all,240F,04/17/18 00:43:33,Read,1buaddl37kffovfk8f6m65spu71jaff5ud@4 ax.com,240f,
ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all,2410,04/17/18 04:07:29,Read ,240f,
ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all,2411,04/17/18 10:47:45,Read ,240f,
ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all,2412,04/17/18 11:04:47,Read ,240f,
ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all,2413,04/17/18 11:43:10,Read ,240f,
ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all,2414,04/17/18 12:00:13,Read ,240f,
ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all,2415,04/17/18 13:40:01,Read ,240f,
ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all,2418,04/18/18 10:58:24,Read ,240f,
----------------------------------------------------------------------
META-TABLE ns:msg:db:row:scope:msgs:all :: 240F
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I truncated those lines, removing "numLines" through "threadParent",
as they would go off the side of the screen.

It is possible to turn the Win10 box .msf file, into a
text listing of headers.

To de-dup crossposts, requires opening multiple Morks at the
same time. If the entire server was kept in one Sqlite file,
de-dup would be "easy" for a database guy. The Thunderbird
approach, is prefaced on limiting the number of Morks open
at any one time. (The idea being, the Mork files "auto-close"
after some time interval of being open, in an attempt to
limit the peak RAM usage of TBird.)

The implementation has gone from "Amusing" to "Downright Ponderous".
That's what I see when I run a newer version for experiment
purposes.

Paul

Ken Springer wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

At best, and if Thunderbird supports it, an article that you read in
one newsgroup could be marked as read when you visit another
newsgroup to which the article was cross-posted.

That used to work, years ago, is my understanding. But Mozilla either
broke it or deleted the functionality. I don't know which.

Keeping a local cache of all MIDs ever retrieved, so the list could be
checked for when you decided to read an article (mark it as read) and
flag it in the list to then scan the MIDs in every other newsgroup you
visit to check for the flag is a lot of overhead. Of the two - broke or
removed - I'd guess they removed it, especially after Mozilla washed
their hands of involvement in Thunderbird and dumped it on a volunteer
community.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43278

Opened 20 years ago. Still not implemented. Lots of discussion over
the years, but a no-go. Looks like Netscape had it, but didn't make it
into Thunderbird.

Ken Blake wrote:

A cross-posted message is showing up in each folder I open that it's
been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it appear only once?

No, TB doesn't recognise cross-posts, you can hit 'k' to ignore the
thread in all but one of the groups it appears in.

VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

At best, and if Thunderbird supports it, an article that you read in
one newsgroup could be marked as read when you visit another
newsgroup to which the article was cross-posted.
That used to work, years ago, is my understanding. But Mozilla either
broke it or deleted the functionality. I don't know which.

Keeping a local cache of all MIDs ever retrieved, so the list could be
checked for when you decided to read an article (mark it as read) and
flag it in the list to then scan the MIDs in every other newsgroup you
visit to check for the flag is a lot of overhead. Of the two - broke or
removed - I'd guess they removed it, especially after Mozilla washed
their hands of involvement in Thunderbird and dumped it on a volunteer
community.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43278

Opened 20 years ago. Still not implemented. Lots of discussion over
the years, but a no-go. Looks like Netscape had it, but didn't make it
into Thunderbird.

Excellent find.

Comedy gold :-)

"But I don't wanna eat my turnips.
...
Alright young man, you'll sit here until you eat them."

Twenty years later "see, I didn't eat the turnips.... I win".

You can't close a bug like that, because you need it so
you can mark other reports of the same thing as
"duplicate of 43278 turnip feast, won't eat, won't even lift fork".

Paul

In article ,
says...

Sorry about the off-topic question, but I don't know where else to ask this.

I'm been trying Thunderbird 68.2.1 as my newsreader, rather than Agent,
which I used to use. I like some things about Thunderbird better than
Agent and some less, so I haven't yet decided which to stick with. But I
have a Thunderbird question:

A cross-posted message is showing up in each folder I open that it's
been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it appear only once? If so,
what should I change to make that happen.

Even more OT, but since I found MicroPlanet Gravity I haven't looked
back:

http://mpgravity.sourceforge.net/

--

Phil, London

VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

At best, and if Thunderbird supports it, an article that you read in
one newsgroup could be marked as read when you visit another
newsgroup to which the article was cross-posted.

That used to work, years ago, is my understanding. But Mozilla either
broke it or deleted the functionality. I don't know which.

Keeping a local cache of all MIDs ever retrieved, so the list could be
checked for when you decided to read an article (mark it as read) and
flag it in the list to then scan the MIDs in every other newsgroup you
visit to check for the flag is a lot of overhead.

It's a trivial task, that's why most newsreaders have this
functionality.

Why is it trivial? Because your News server adds its article numbers
(note: article numbers, *not* message-ids (MIDs)) to the 'Xref:' header
it generates and puts in the local (server) copy of the article.

Example:


So when your newsreader notices you've read the article in one of the
groups, it will mark all the article numbers (105943 and 951278 in the
example) as read. (When you 'leave' a group, the article numbers of
read articles are updated in your '.newsrc' file (or equivalent).)

So your newsreader does not have to keep "a local cache of all MIDs
ever retrieved". It just has to process the article numbers which are
readily available in the 'Xref:' header of the very article it's
currently processing.

Just check any crossposted article and you'll see the groupnames and
your server's article numbers in the 'Xref:' which your server
generated/added.

N.B. Article numbers are server-specific and the 'Xref:' header is one
of the few headers a News server is allowed to change (in transit from
one server to the next).

Frank Slootweg wrote:
VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

At best, and if Thunderbird supports it, an article that you read in
one newsgroup could be marked as read when you visit another
newsgroup to which the article was cross-posted.
That used to work, years ago, is my understanding. But Mozilla either
broke it or deleted the functionality. I don't know which.
Keeping a local cache of all MIDs ever retrieved, so the list could be
checked for when you decided to read an article (mark it as read) and
flag it in the list to then scan the MIDs in every other newsgroup you
visit to check for the flag is a lot of overhead.

It's a trivial task, that's why most newsreaders have this
functionality.

Why is it trivial? Because your News server adds its article numbers
(note: article numbers, *not* message-ids (MIDs)) to the 'Xref:' header
it generates and puts in the local (server) copy of the article.

Example:

Xref: uni-berlin.de alt.comp.os.windows-10:105943 alt.comp.freewa951278

So when your newsreader notices you've read the article in one of the
groups, it will mark all the article numbers (105943 and 951278 in the
example) as read. (When you 'leave' a group, the article numbers of
read articles are updated in your '.newsrc' file (or equivalent).)

So your newsreader does not have to keep "a local cache of all MIDs
ever retrieved". It just has to process the article numbers which are
readily available in the 'Xref:' header of the very article it's
currently processing.

Just check any crossposted article and you'll see the groupnames and
your server's article numbers in the 'Xref:' which your server
generated/added.

N.B. Article numbers are server-specific and the 'Xref:' header is one
of the few headers a News server is allowed to change (in transit from
one server to the next).

But the Win10 .msf is 40MB and the Win7 .msf is 70MB.

Unlike SQlite databases, I don't think the .msf files can be
opened and only a single record updated. The storage is too
irregular for that. It might be the .msf is opened entirely,
into RAM, and written out after something is updated. And
the .msf is where the "Read" bit is stored for the articles
in that group.

Part of the reason for treading lightly, is the infrastructure
in Thunderbird isn't the best (My opinion, I'd like to be
proved wrong). Whether SQLite is the answer, I'm not a database
guy, and can't forecast what the improvement would be.

Just watching the time it takes to change the "View" of a
newsgroup window, is a hint how much trouble the thing is in.

Paul

On 03/11/2019 14.51, Paul wrote:
Frank Slootweg wrote:
VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

At best, and if Thunderbird supports it, an article that you read in
one newsgroup could be marked as read when you visit another
newsgroup to which the article was cross-posted.
That used to work, years ago, is my understanding.Â* But Mozilla
either broke it or deleted the functionality.Â* I don't know which.
Keeping a local cache of all MIDs ever retrieved, so the list could be
checked for when you decided to read an article (mark it as read) and
flag it in the list to then scan the MIDs in every other newsgroup you
visit to check for the flag is a lot of overhead.

Â* It's a trivial task, that's why most newsreaders have this
functionality.

Â* Why is it trivial? Because your News server adds its article numbers
(note: article numbers, *not* message-ids (MIDs)) to the 'Xref:' header
it generates and puts in the local (server) copy of the article.

Â* Example:

Xref: uni-berlin.de alt.comp.os.windows-10:105943
alt.comp.freewa951278

Â* So when your newsreader notices you've read the article in one of the
groups, it will mark all the article numbers (105943 and 951278 in the
example) as read.Â* (When you 'leave' a group, the article numbers of
read articles are updated in your '.newsrc' file (or equivalent).)

Â* So your newsreader does not have to keep "a local cache of all MIDs
ever retrieved". It just has to process the article numbers which are
readily available in the 'Xref:' header of the very article it's
currently processing.

Â* Just check any crossposted article and you'll see the groupnames and
your server's article numbers in the 'Xref:' which your server
generated/added.

N.B. Article numbers are server-specific and the 'Xref:' header is one
of the few headers a News server is allowed to change (in transit from
one server to the next).

But the Win10 .msf is 40MB and the Win7 .msf is 70MB.

Mine is smaller. You can tell Th to rebuild it.


Unlike SQlite databases, I don't think the .msf files can be
opened and only a single record updated. The storage is too
irregular for that. It might be the .msf is opened entirely,
into RAM, and written out after something is updated. And
the .msf is where the "Read" bit is stored for the articles
in that group.

Maybe.

It is a text file here (linux), you can have a look. There are big
sections with this structu


5776,35779,35787,35792,35802,35803,35806,35807,358 18,35860,35864,35874-35876,3\
5878,35882,35884,35888,35889,35900,35901,35905,359 14,35943,35946,35947,35949-3\
5955,35957-35973,35976,35977,35979-35983,35986,35991-35994,35996,35998,36002,3\

and those seem to be server indexes. There are other sections I don't
know what they are.


Part of the reason for treading lightly, is the infrastructure
in Thunderbird isn't the best (My opinion, I'd like to be
proved wrong). Whether SQLite is the answer, I'm not a database
guy, and can't forecast what the improvement would be.

I know that the message storage is not the best.


Just watching the time it takes to change the "View" of a
newsgroup window, is a hint how much trouble the thing is in.

Yes.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 11/2/2019 7:05 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:

Sorry about the off-topic question, but I don't know where else to ask this.

I'm been trying Thunderbird 68.2.1 as my newsreader, rather than Agent,
which I used to use. I like some things about Thunderbird better than
Agent and some less, so I haven't yet decided which to stick with. But I
have a Thunderbird question:

A cross-posted message is showing up in each folder I open that it's
been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it appear only once? If so,
what should I change to make that happen.

Thunderbird newsgroup: mozilla.support.thunderbird
Mozilla NNTP server: news.mozilla.org, port 119

I doubt you can have a newsgroup omitted in one newsgroup when visiting
another newsgroup to which it was cross-posted. After all, hiding would
depend on which newsgroup you visited first to then hide in the other
newsgroup(s) which you might or might not visit. Also, just because
someone decides to cross-post to multiple newsgroups doesn't mean
everyone who replies must also post to the same group of newsgroups.
Users might decide to send their reply only to the newsgroups they know
or the ones they visit, not to someplace they don't know and don't go,
especially if cross-posting involves unrelated or garbage newsgroups.
You'd read an article with its replies in one newsgroup but hiding that
article in another newsgroup means not seeing the separate replies over
there. No one has to cross-post their replies to the same newsgroups
the prior user decided to cross-post to.

At best, and if Thunderbird supports it, an article that you read in one
newsgroup could be marked as read when you visit another newsgroup to
which the article was cross-posted.


Yes, I worded my question poorly. That's what I wanted.

Thank you and thanks to all others who responded. It looks like I can't
do what I want, but I'll try the Thunderbird newsgroup. I have a vague
memory of having tried to get the,re but my newsserver couldn't get
there. I'll try again.

--
Ken

On 11/3/2019 7:42 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 11/2/2019 7:05 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:

Sorry about the off-topic question, but I don't know where else to ask this.

I'm been trying Thunderbird 68.2.1 as my newsreader, rather than Agent,
which I used to use. I like some things about Thunderbird better than
Agent and some less, so I haven't yet decided which to stick with. But I
have a Thunderbird question:

A cross-posted message is showing up in each folder I open that it's
been cross-posted to. Is it possible to have it appear only once? If so,
what should I change to make that happen.

Thunderbird newsgroup: mozilla.support.thunderbird
Mozilla NNTP server: news.mozilla.org, port 119

I doubt you can have a newsgroup omitted in one newsgroup when visiting
another newsgroup to which it was cross-posted. After all, hiding would
depend on which newsgroup you visited first to then hide in the other
newsgroup(s) which you might or might not visit. Also, just because
someone decides to cross-post to multiple newsgroups doesn't mean
everyone who replies must also post to the same group of newsgroups.
Users might decide to send their reply only to the newsgroups they know
or the ones they visit, not to someplace they don't know and don't go,
especially if cross-posting involves unrelated or garbage newsgroups.
You'd read an article with its replies in one newsgroup but hiding that
article in another newsgroup means not seeing the separate replies over
there. No one has to cross-post their replies to the same newsgroups
the prior user decided to cross-post to.

At best, and if Thunderbird supports it, an article that you read in one
newsgroup could be marked as read when you visit another newsgroup to
which the article was cross-posted.


Yes, I worded my question poorly. That's what I wanted.

Thank you and thanks to all others who responded. It looks like I can't
do what I want, but I'll try the Thunderbird newsgroup. I have a vague
memory of having tried to get the,re but my newsserver couldn't get
there. I'll try again.


OK, I just subscribed to it. My memory of a problem was wrong.


--
Ken