Sorting and other display questions

[crawfish]

1. When I open a group, e.g. by double-clicking its name, and I've sorted headers by (say) subject, the headers usually aren't sorted by subject when the group window opens, despite having a couple of chances, as it seems to incrementally load contents. I can get it in order by clicking "subject" to reverse sort and then again to sort in ascending order, but this is clumsy. When it ends an operation, it needs to ensure that what it's displaying is consistent with the selected view options.

2. There are other thing that don't refresh the display as they should, e.g. "Mark All Old" doesn't appear to have any effect when used on a group window displaying headers, but when I close and reopen the window, the headers are marked old or aren't displayed depending on the "Hide Old" setting. At the least, the window should immediately display the headers using the "old" colors after "Mark All Old" is used.

3. In the group list, is there any way to display the number of "new" headers in parens next to the group names?

[Quade]

1 - It's probably still importing RV4's in the background so, you get one good sort, and then as new records show up, it goes unsorted again. If the progress bar is up and cycling, that's what's happening. Once they're all imported, it'll be back to normal.

2 - Don't understand what you mean. Marking old is a background process and won't complete immediately though.

3 - I can consider it. I assume you mean "new since I last opened the group". Which means opening the group resets it to zero.

[crawfish]

1 - It's probably still importing RV4's in the background so, you get one good sort, and then as new records show up, it goes unsorted again. If the progress bar is up and cycling, that's what's happening. Once they're all imported, it'll be back to normal.

2 - Don't understand what you mean. Marking old is a background process and won't complete immediately though.

3 - I can consider it. I assume you mean "new since I last opened the group". Which means opening the group resets it to zero.

1. Nope, it never fully sorts for me. This is easily observed when only a few new headers (say 50-100) have been downloaded.

2. Again, this is easily observed when only a few new headers are showing. The function "Mark All Old" appears to have no effect at all, while selecting posts and choosing "Mark Posts Old" does the expected thing immediately.

3. I meant "not marked old". So headers have to become "old" for it ever to go down. That's how I had it configured in Forte Agent, anyway, and it was really good for telling at a glance what you've looked at and what you haven't.

[Quade]

#3 won't happen like that. I'm not going to count old/new but, I could set a high watermark and display the difference between the last time you loaded and the number of the header downloaded since you last updated. That's all I'm offering. It's like your "count new" but, it won't count any old posts that are still marked new.

[mho]

3 - I can consider it. I assume you mean "new since I last opened the group". Which means opening the group resets it to zero.

What I think would be interesting it to just do a GROUP for each of the subscribed groups and compare highest article number against the db to give a rough estimate of the number of new headers that could be displayed on the Groups tab. This should be essentially free (except for the UI bit, I guess), and help people decide when to update - even if the XOVER is quick, as the current deferred db inserts sometimes take really long (at least with my slowish, true-crypted, shared spool disk:-)) to catch up, it's not always a good idea to just hit ctrl-G and let things just sort themselves out.

- mho

[crawfish]

#3 won't happen like that. I'm not going to count old/new but, I could set a high watermark and display the difference between the last time you loaded and the number of the header downloaded since you last updated. That's all I'm offering. It's like your "count new" but, it won't count any old posts that are still marked new.

I'm not sure I'd bother with it then. After using Agent for so many years, I think in terms of "read" and "unread" posts, where "read" just means "marked read" for whatever reason, implicit or explicit. It doesn't necessarily mean downloaded. It can take a long time to slog through a bunch of headers, over several sessions with the program, with downloading of new headers adding to the list all the time, and what I'm interested in is the total count of what's left to examine, i.e. the number of "unread" posts. If you can't do this sort of count, I'd prefer a simple boolean to indicate "non-old" headers exist in the group rather than counting a certain kind of "new" header but not the rest of the "new" headers. I think it would be very confusing to have these "old-new" and "new-new" headers, with the term "non-old" referring to both types. The boolean could be an icon, bolding the name of the group, etc.

[crawfish]

1. When I open a group, e.g. by double-clicking its name, and I've sorted headers by (say) subject, the headers usually aren't sorted by subject when the group window opens, despite having a couple of chances, as it seems to incrementally load contents. I can get it in order by clicking "subject" to reverse sort and then again to sort in ascending order, but this is clumsy. When it ends an operation, it needs to ensure that what it's displaying is consistent with the selected view options.

2. There are other thing that don't refresh the display as they should, e.g. "Mark All Old" doesn't appear to have any effect when used on a group window displaying headers, but when I close and reopen the window, the headers are marked old or aren't displayed depending on the "Hide Old" setting. At the least, the window should immediately display the headers using the "old" colors after "Mark All Old" is used.

Were you guys able to repro these two? Still happening in b7 FWIW.

[crawfish]

(1) and (2) are still happening in B9.

I'd also prefer the header list not to refresh itself with partial contents as the headers download. I'd prefer to wait until all headers have been downloaded for it to display anything. This way, when I see headers in the list, I'll know I can begin browsing them right away, rather than having to look down at the Download List to determine if the header download is still in progress.

[Quade]

Without it, double-clicking on an empty group, you'd never see any headers.

I basically have two choices, insert into the database in real time so, you can really see when the header download is done or leave it like it is and handle the inserts in the background, which means you don't know when they're done but, you get the fastest header downloads. Perhaps I can make this optional too so, you can decide which you want. Either way, I don't see real time inserts into the listing go away. What could go away is background importing of headers from RV4 which is probably what you really object to.

[MilesAhead]

1. Nope, it never fully sorts for me. This is easily observed when only a few new headers (say 50-100) have been downloaded.

This is the same behavior I mentioned where I have groups sorted largest at top. Sometimes it does sort properly, sometimes not. But even if it is sorted correctly, usually the triangle indicator is pointing the wrong way. I have to click inside the Posts window on an item, then click the triangle once or twice to get things as they used to appear immediately in V5. Not a big deal, but it's there in my setup also.

edit: and this is with no activity. Headers are all downloaded and the window has stopped updating.