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.

On 03/11/2019 02.52, T wrote:
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.

That's a missing feature in Thunderbird. :-(


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.

Problem is, there are people that don't answer on all the groups.

What I do is, read in one group, then on the other group skim the posts
that list the previous group. Manually.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 11/3/2019 12:37 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 03/11/2019 02.52, T wrote:
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.

That's a missing feature in Thunderbird. :-(


Apparently so. I've asked in the Thunderbird NG. If I get a different
answer, I'll post back here.



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.

Problem is, there are people that don't answer on all the groups.

What I do is, read in one group, then on the other group skim the posts
that list the previous group. Manually.



--
Ken

On 03/11/2019 20.50, Ken Blake wrote:
On 11/3/2019 12:37 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 03/11/2019 02.52, T wrote:
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.

That's a missing feature in Thunderbird. :-(


Apparently so. I've asked in the Thunderbird NG. If I get a different
answer, I'll post back here.

Thanks :-)

Even a plugin or an external program would help.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

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 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.

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

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

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).

If it is so trivial to code, why hasn't it appeared in 20 years?
Mozilla Dev obviously never bothered with the requested feature.
Apparently the volunteer community isn't addressing the old tickets,
either.

Thunderbird is sensitive to where is the newsrc file. From bug ticket
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99238, still listed with
New status (i.e., not resolved) after 18 years, moving the newsrc file
somehow disconnects Thunderbird from knowing which newsgroups to which
it was subscribed under an account. Thunderbird sometimes corrupts the
newsrc file (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=403200, 12
years old).

Aren't newsrc files just text files? That means having to open then and
parse each line to scan for article numbers. That's very slow. If you
subscribe to just a few newsgroups, probably not a noticeable
performance impact. If you subscribe to a few hundred, yeah, all that
lookup will be slow. Isn't there a newsrc file for every subscribed
newsgroup? When selecting a newsgroup to download, each article
retrieve would have its ID search in all the newsrc files for every
other subscribed newsgroup. When you subscribe, and when retrieving all
new messages (which would be ALL of them), that would require the
article lookup across all the other newsrc files. If there is just one
newsrc per account (i.e., per server) which tracks all messages across
all subscribed newsgroups, that would be less files to parse and scan.

I don't use newsgroups from a *NIX host, so I've not been acquainted
with newsrc files or how their contents are structured, and I didn't
have to deal with them with Thunderbird on Windows. On searching, all
the online article talk about how to use tools to tidy up or modify the
newsrc files or how to use them for configuration, but I've not found
one that delves into the content or structure of one. Can Notepad or
gvim be used to edit a newsrc file? If I were still using Thunderbird,
I would hope newsrc files are databases and not text files. If all
articles ever retrieved for a subscribed newsgroup on a server were
stored in a newsrc file, and since some newsgroups have MANY thousands
of article depending on the retention of the server, that's a lot or
records to store in a text file to then parse every line to scan for a
matching article ID. Seems odd that Thunderbird uses SQLite for some of
its databases but doesn't embrace Sqlite for all its databases
(http://kb.mozillazine.org/Files_and_...-_Thunderbird).

Article IDs are unique per server. Only the MID value remains the same
as the article gets peered across servers (barring MID collisions). You
mentioned the Xref header has the article's ID number, but it also
specifies the server from which the article was retrieved. The same
article on a different server would have a different article ID. A user
might subscribe to a newsgroup on more than one server: a cross-posted
article could be one one server in one newsgroup but the user looks at
the copy on a different server in the other cross-posted newsgroup. The
Xref you see would be for the server you used for a subscribed newsgroup
to retrieve a copy of a message. In the cross-posted newsgroup where
you retrieved the message from a different server, that other server's
article number would be different. You'd see one message with its Xref
showing server, newsgroup, and article number but the cross-posted copy
that got peered to the other server would show other server,
cross-posted newsgroup, and different article number. Seems the lookup
to establish the same state (i.e., read) across cross-posted newsgroups
would only work within the confines of subscribing to newsgroups on the
same server. When peering an article across servers, I thought only the
MID value was retained.

Seem the Xref header MUST be changed by the server when an article is
peered to it. The peered-to server would assign its own article ID to
the peered article, so it would specify its own article ID just assigned
to the peered copy of the message. How would a client know:


which shows the article number and newsgroup for a message on *my*
server was the same as:

or

The Xref header shows only what my server assigned for an article number
for every article my client retrieves from my server. It won't know
what some other server did for article ID assignment. But the MID
should remain the same for peered articles, even when posted to multiple
newsgroups (multiple pointers to one copy of the article).

Xref would allow tracking of cross-posted articles within the same
server, not across servers. I thought that's what the MID was used for.
Doesn't the MID stay the same in each copy of a cross-posted message? I
would think so since the server only has 1 copy of the message and
simply uses pointers to it in each newsgroup. If the client is tracking
messages by Xref, that only works within the confines of one server. I
have accounts to individual.net, eternal-september, and albasani, and I
could add more. I could read a message on server-A in newsgroup-A but
see the same (peered) message on server-B crossposted to newsgroup-B.
Same article but different article IDs on each server. The MID would be
the same, though.

I can see the newsrc file would let you track cross-posted articles
across newsgroups but only on one server. From what I read of newsrc
files, that's what they're for: used for one account that connects to
one server. Each server gets its own newsrc file. Okay, but that
doesn't cover every scenario for tracking cross-posted messages, like
when reading each of the cross-posted newsgroups from a differen server.
Still having something (tracking cross-posting within a server) would be
better than nothing. Likely the vast majority of Usenetizens only
connect to one server.

On 3 Nov 2019 12:19:15 GMT, 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.

Agent 2.0 has two options under what they call Crosspost Management:
o Subject, Author, Date, Lines
o Message ID

Actions include the following options:
o Do Nothing
o Mark Read
o Don't Retrieve

Note that Agent 2.0 uses a separate database for its crosspost management
tasks, not the .newsrc file. I don't think the .newsrc file can be used for
this task, even if a developer wanted to. The crosspost database gets
consulted/updated during article retrieval, and it gets purged during
article delete/purge, so it never has records for 'all messages ever
received' unless the user never does any housekeeping.

The xref header wouldn't be a good choice because it's server specific.
It's not that unusual to have multiple servers defined, which would likely
break crosspost checking.

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).)

As stated above, Agent does all of its crosspost checking during article
retrieval. No further work is done when a message is read/unread. Also, I
don't think .newsrc is allowed to be used for crosspost management.

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).

Agreed, and that's why xref wouldn't be the best choice.

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