GSoC Idea

[Amir Aavani]

Hi all,

I proposed an idea for this year Google summer of code, in the
brainstorming page, but I am not sure how the brainstorming ideas work.
Should I wait for your feedback on my idea? My proposal is:

Since Google reader will not be accessible anymore, soon, many Gooders
are looking for new website/application to migrate their data and use it
instead of G-Reader. I have been playing around with Thunderbird
Feedreader, for a while and I noticed the following shortcoming in it:

1- It does not respect the folder setting of G-Reader. 2- Finding the
unread items is not easy: one need to check all the weblogs to find the
unread posts. 3- Syncing: I have installed Thunderbird both on my
school's desktop and on my home laptop. Since I am fetching my emails
through IMAP protocol, I did not feel I need to sync my Thunderbirds.
But having imported the weblogs I am following, this is a necessity. 4-
Storage: Again, having multiple Thunderbirds urges having universally
accessible storages (like Google drive or dropbox). 5- Tracking Weblogs
with unread items is hard: One need to scroll all the weblogs to find
the weblogs having unread items in them. Having the feature to hide
weblogs without any unread item is going to be helpful. 6- Thunderbird
does not render some folder names (weblogs name) properly: It mainly
happens when the name of weblog is in Persian and it ends with close
parenthesis (I am experiencing the same issue in Firefox, too)

I believe 1,2,5 and 6 are the most important items. Then we can work on
4, and then 3.

Thanks,
Amir

[Gervase Markham]

Hi Amir,

On 19/04/13 17:01, Amir Aavani wrote:
> I proposed an idea for this year Google summer of code, in the
> brainstorming page, but I am not sure how the brainstorming ideas work.

You don't need to add your ideas to that page. The page even says:

"You can, of course, also submit your own ideas - you don't have to put
an idea on this page and get it 'made official' in order to send in a
proposal for it."

> Since Google reader will not be accessible anymore, soon, many Gooders
> are looking for new website/application to migrate their data and use it
> instead of G-Reader. I have been playing around with Thunderbird
> Feedreader, for a while and I noticed the following shortcoming in it:
>
> 1- It does not respect the folder setting of G-Reader. 2- Finding the
> unread items is not easy: one need to check all the weblogs to find the
> unread posts. 3- Syncing: I have installed Thunderbird both on my
> school's desktop and on my home laptop. Since I am fetching my emails
> through IMAP protocol, I did not feel I need to sync my Thunderbirds.
> But having imported the weblogs I am following, this is a necessity. 4-
> Storage: Again, having multiple Thunderbirds urges having universally
> accessible storages (like Google drive or dropbox). 5- Tracking Weblogs
> with unread items is hard: One need to scroll all the weblogs to find
> the weblogs having unread items in them. Having the feature to hide
> weblogs without any unread item is going to be helpful. 6- Thunderbird
> does not render some folder names (weblogs name) properly: It mainly
> happens when the name of weblog is in Persian and it ends with close
> parenthesis (I am experiencing the same issue in Firefox, too)
>
> I believe 1,2,5 and 6 are the most important items. Then we can work on
> 4, and then 3.

You are welcome to send in a proposal to work on Thunderbird's feed
reader. Your proposal will be much more likely to be accepted if:

a) you can find a Mozillian willing to mentor it. Posting here is a good
start, but you could also contact people who have worked on this code in
the past;

b) you have a much more detailed plan and timeline of the work you would
achieve, rather than a list of feature requests. :-)

Gerv

[Amir Aavani]

Hi Gerv,

Thanks for your quick response.

> You are welcome to send in a proposal to work on Thunderbird's feed
> reader. Your proposal will be much more likely to be accepted if:
>
> a) you can find a Mozillian willing to mentor it. Posting here is a good
> start, but you could also contact people who have worked on this code in
> the past;
>

I am not sure how to find a mentor. As you said I thought posting the idea
here is the first step. I assumed all the current/active thunderbird's
developers are in this list.
So if there is anyone interested in mentoring this project, we can discuss
my plan and qualifications.

Thanks,
Amir

[David Lechner]

On 4/19/2013 3:49 PM, Amir Aavani wrote:

> I am not sure how to find a mentor. As you said I thought posting the idea
> here is the first step. I assumed all the current/active thunderbird's
> developers are in this list.
> So if there is anyone interested in mentoring this project, we can discuss
> my plan and qualifications.

It looks like alta88 and aceman have been the most active in Feed Reader
bugs in recent history. Like Gerv said, pick some specific goals and
type up a more detailed proposal of how exactly you plan to accomplish
them. Then, send it to those 2 personally and ask for feedback. If you
are lucky, the may even be willing to be a mentor.

Also, here is a related project that you might find interesting.
https://github.com/owncloud/news

Good luck!

[alta88[nntp]]

Hi, I've just noticed this post. Some comments below.

---On 2013.Apr.19 10:01 AM, Amir Aavani wrote:> Hi all,

>
> I proposed an idea for this year Google summer of code, in the
> brainstorming page, but I am not sure how the brainstorming ideas work.
> Should I wait for your feedback on my idea? My proposal is:
>
> Since Google reader will not be accessible anymore, soon, many Gooders
> are looking for new website/application to migrate their data and use it
> instead of G-Reader. I have been playing around with Thunderbird
> Feedreader, for a while and I noticed the following shortcoming in it:
>
> 1- It does not respect the folder setting of G-Reader.

If all feeds from a valid opmlare not imported, a bug should be filed.
However, note that the true structure of imported folders/feeds is shown
in the Subscribe dialog. Importantly, note that in Tb a 'folder' may
have 0, 1, or many feed url subscription properties. These are shown in
Subscribe, but not in the folder pane. In Tb, a folder in the tree
represents either an account, a subdirectory, or a (currently) berkely
mbox datastore.

2- Finding the
> unread items is not easy: one need to check all the weblogs to find the
> unread posts.

One can easily create a saved search folder, with a rule to show status
of unread, at any level in an account folder hierarchy.

> 3- Syncing: I have installed Thunderbird both on my
> school's desktop and on my home laptop. Since I am fetching my emails
> through IMAP protocol, I did not feel I need to sync my Thunderbirds.
> But having imported the weblogs I am following, this is a necessity.
> 4- Storage: Again, having multiple Thunderbirds urges having universally
> accessible storages (like Google drive or dropbox).

Well, if you mean sync like Firefox Sync, I believe this was
investigated as a past GSOC project. Imo, sync as a service for Moz
products could be a great revenue model but it's a Mozilla decision.

And syncing to anything in the cloud would be a large project. If I had
to absolutely have certain feeds in the cloud, I'd not recreate the
wheel, but instead set up filters to move/copy them to an existing IMAP
account and create a folder structure there, if the storage cost isn't
an issue..

> 5- Tracking Weblogs
> with unread items is hard: One need to scroll all the weblogs to find
> the weblogs having unread items in them. Having the feature to hide
> weblogs without any unread item is going to be helpful.

Creating folder hierarchies within the feeds account root can make the
tree very organized, and saved search folders can get you access to
specific items fast, based on rules you create (right click, Search
Messages). In addition, smart folders are built in and span all folders
all accounts. View->Folders. The easily discoverable UI was mistakenly
removed from folderpane.

> 6- Thunderbird
> does not render some folder names (weblogs name) properly: It mainly
> happens when the name of weblog is in Persian and it ends with close
> parenthesis (I am experiencing the same issue in Firefox, too)
>

Feed folder names are created from the feed's title. When the title is
non ascii, the OS filesystem name is created as a hash value. The
'pretty' name is stored as a property of the folder; the name can be
changed to any localized value. If the properties db is
unavailable/corrupted (imo rare), then the hash value is displayed.
This leads to dismay but the folder can be renamed back.. Note that in
Subscribe you can click on the Store Articles in: field, with a folder
selected, to show the disk name.

[amir....@gmail.com]

Hi,

I believe you have not used G-Reader. All I am proposing is to make
using Feed reader more convenient.

Surely, one can search for unread posts or create a search to do so,
for him. But in the search result, we are going to have the list of
unread posts. Finding which weblog a post belongs to is not easy.

As you mentioned, changing the View/Folders to Unread(Advnaced)
helps, but unfortunately, it changes the folder organization of all
accounts.

About syncing:
Syncing for feed-reader is essential.
It was my assumption that the platform for syncing is ready in
Mozilla, and it has not been implemented becasue it was unnecessary,
when we are dealing with just emails.

Syncing can be implemented through an adds-on, for example.

I am just talking about Feed-reader. Most of the features, if not all
of them, I listed below are not necessary for a mail-client. But they
are a necessity for a good feed-reader.

Amir

> _______________________________________________
> dev-apps-thunderbird mailing list
> dev-apps-t...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-thunderbird

[alta88[nntp]]

---On 2013.Apr.30 12:36 PM, Amir....@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I believe you have not used G-Reader. All I am proposing is to make
> using Feed reader more convenient.
>

I'm certainly not suggesting it shouldn't be, or that it's somehow
perfect, but merely pointing out there are different ways to do things
that aren't exact google clones.

> Surely, one can search for unread posts or create a search to do so,
> for him. But in the search result, we are going to have the list of
> unread posts. Finding which weblog a post belongs to is not easy.
>

Sure it is. The name of the feed folder the message belongs to is found
in the Location column of a saved search. It's sortable too.

> As you mentioned, changing the View/Folders to Unread(Advnaced)
> helps, but unfortunately, it changes the folder organization of all
> accounts.
>
> About syncing:
> Syncing for feed-reader is essential.
> It was my assumption that the platform for syncing is ready in
> Mozilla, and it has not been implemented becasue it was unnecessary,
> when we are dealing with just emails.
>

Yes, there is a platform, intended for smallish chunks of data. If the
proposal is to implement using Sync for things like mail or feed content
in the core product, that's a much different proposition. Of course, an
addon could take advantage of this, perhaps not to the liking of Mozilla.

> Syncing can be implemented through an adds-on, for example.
>
> I am just talking about Feed-reader. Most of the features, if not all
> of them, I listed below are not necessary for a mail-client. But they
> are a necessity for a good feed-reader.
>

The organization of folders natively is bad. There is an addon,
Manually Sort Folders, that solves some issues. Perhaps implementing
those functions would be a good project, very useful for both feeds and
mail.

[alta88[nntp]]

---On 2013.Apr.30 1:52 PM, alta88[nntp] wrote:
>
>
>
> ---On 2013.Apr.30 12:36 PM, Amir....@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> About syncing:
>> Syncing for feed-reader is essential.
>> It was my assumption that the platform for syncing is ready in
>> Mozilla, and it has not been implemented becasue it was unnecessary,
>> when we are dealing with just emails.
>>
>
> Yes, there is a platform, intended for smallish chunks of data. If the
> proposal is to implement using Sync for things like mail or feed content
> in the core product, that's a much different proposition. Of course, an
> addon could take advantage of this, perhaps not to the liking of Mozilla.
>

By the way, Sync does allow for user defined servers. I believe it is
being significantly re-engineered at the moment and is in a bit of flux.

[Joshua Cranmer 🐧]

On 4/30/2013 2:52 PM, alta88[nntp] wrote:
>
> ---On 2013.Apr.30 12:36 PM, Amir....@gmail.com wrote:
>> About syncing:
>> Syncing for feed-reader is essential.
>> It was my assumption that the platform for syncing is ready in
>> Mozilla, and it has not been implemented becasue it was unnecessary,
>> when we are dealing with just emails.
>>
>
> Yes, there is a platform, intended for smallish chunks of data. If the
> proposal is to implement using Sync for things like mail or feed
> content in the core product, that's a much different proposition. Of
> course, an addon could take advantage of this, perhaps not to the
> liking of Mozilla.

Given prior discussions about the sync service, they would welcome
Thunderbird using sync, but they've advised us not to implement anything
yet since the API is undergoing a major overhaul. That said, they have
objected to us syncing full mail data due to storage issues. Syncing the
subscribed feed lists would not be a storage size objection, and it is
probably possible to design a way of synchronizing the feed items if the
data is limited to a small amount of metadata like read/unread.

--
Joshua Cranmer
Thunderbird and DXR developer
Source code archæologist