NewsRob marks everything as read

[Execvator]

Every time NewsRob syncs it appears to mark all the currently
downloaded feeds as read. Which means that it's way harder than it
should be to find them when I want to read them on my computer.
This might have been because I used the experimental "Unread Articles
Only" option, I have changed to the normal "All Articles" option now.
I'm using Android 1.6 on a HTC Tattoo.

[Mariano Kamp]

Oh, that's bad. I have heard about this issue before, but was not able
to follow up on it.

I would appreciate if you could turn on logging and provide me with
more info. I outlines the steps here: http://groups.google.com/group/newsrob/msg/70e8a43586683bf2

Could you please do that?

On a sidenote, I am on vacation at the moment, so I likely won't be
able to answer you within the next days, but that shouldn't keep you
from deploying the newsrob.debug file (see the referenced message).

Cheers,
Mariano

[Disconnect]

I may have the same issue - using the latest market version, and I've been wondering why my feeds are emptying way faster than I am reading. (Thought it might have hit google's stale-article limits, but that is a one-off and this has been ongoing for a few days now..)

I'll gather logs and let you know..

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[Execvator]

Re: the things discovered in the thread you linked; which for some
reason I couldn't find when I searched.

The unread articles actually show up in the list, as unread, when any
of the "show all" options are chosen in Google Reader. So at least one
can find them among the read ones. :)

> I would appreciate if you could turn on logging and provide me with
> more info. I outlines the steps here:http://groups.google.com/group/newsrob/msg/70e8a43586683bf2

I have turned on logging now.

> On a sidenote, I am on vacation at the moment, so I likely won't be
> able to answer you within the next days, but that shouldn't keep you
> from deploying the newsrob.debug file (see the referenced message).

Sort of the same here. I have a bad memory so it's more of a "report
before I forget" thing right now :P
But I'll make sure to keep logs and try get one with the error that's
as short as possible. Or would it be better with just a long one?

Also, the connection here is rather... "sporadic" (?) so it's hard to
debug when the connection disappears periodically (which seems to
abort the sync).

[Mariano Kamp]

I will only be able to invest much more time on the next weekend, but just looked through my code for two hours. 

I don't really see where I should go wrong here. However the syncing mechanism is complicated so it might very well be that I have an issue, that I just don't see and without a reproducible test case life is hard.

What I would like to ask you guys is to be especially observant to your use of "Mark All Read". Could it be that more is marked read than is shown? And don't got by the number that is displayed by "Mark All Read" alone as it is calculated a slightly different way then the what is used to actually mark the articles read.

Execvator.

The unread articles actually show up in the list, as unread, when any
of the "show all" options are chosen in Google Reader. So at least one
can find them among the read ones. :)

That would actually support my theory about Mark All Read not working properly. The articles should bear an orange "*" though. Is that the case?

After the next sync they will be removed.

 

Sort of the same here. I have a bad memory so it's more of a "report

before I forget" thing right now :P
But I'll make sure to keep logs and try get one with the error that's
as short as possible. Or would it be better with just a long one?

It would be best if you would report when something happened that you consider fishy. And I will then start from there in the long log.

Also, the connection here is rather... "sporadic" (?) so it's hard to
debug when the connection disappears periodically (which seems to
abort the sync).

Yes, it does after some time. 

[Mariano Kamp]

One implication I didn't explicitly mention before.

If this is a mark-all-read issue, then it should happen to many users, not just the ones that use the experimental sync.

That would also fit what Austin once wrote:

"I hate to say it, but even after reverting to the other version of
3.3.0 (without the feature that only syncs unread articles), I am
still having that issue where the manual update is marking everything
as read.  This also happened yesterday, but I didn't have time to send
this email or grab screen shot for you."

Anyway, I changed the code so that NewsRob almost uses 100% of the same code when calculating the number of articles that are going to be marked as read and the code that actually does that. 100% is not possible due some restrictions of the Android API.

The binary has not been maturing on my phone, so handle with care or wait a bit (until next weekend the latest).

It also contains the other changes for NewsRob 3.5. I just don't have the time now to write release notes.

Get it here.

[Scott Fringer]

I've just recently joined this group, but believe I am seeing similar issues.  I frequently leave some articles unread so I can read them on my MacBook.  For one or two syncs they remain unread, only to "disappear" after a sync.  I don't recall doing anything specific to mark them read.  I'm happy to collect any logs that may help.

Sco

On Jan 3, 2010 8:49 AM, "Mariano Kamp" <marian...@gmail.com> wrote:

One implication I didn't explicitly mention before.

If this is a mark-all-read issue, then it should happen to many users, not just the ones that use the experimental sync.

That would also fit what Austin once wrote:

"I hate to say it, but even after reverting to the other version of
3.3.0 (without the feature that only syncs unread articles), I am
still having that issue where the manual update is marking everything
as read.  This also happened yesterday, but I didn't have time to send
this email or grab screen shot for you."

Anyway, I changed the code so that NewsRob almost uses 100% of the same code when calculating the number of articles that are going to be marked as read and the code that actually does that. 100% is not possible due some restrictions of the Android API.

The binary has not been maturing on my phone, so handle with care or wait a bit (until next weekend the latest).

It also contains the other changes for NewsRob 3.5. I just don't have the time now to write release notes.

Get it here.

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Mariano Kamp <marian...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I will only be ab...

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[Mariano Kamp]

Scott, thanks for adding your experience here.

Do you use mark all read from time to time? Do you use notifications and mark all read there?

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[Mariano Kamp]

And do you use "Keep And Sync: Unread Articles Only (Experimental)"?

[Scott Fringer]

On Jan 3, 2010 9:14 AM, "Mariano Kamp" <marian...@gmail.com> wrote:

Scott, thanks for adding your experience here.

Do you use mark all read from time to time? Do you use notifications and mark all read there?

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Scott Fringer <scott....@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I've just recently joined this group, but believe I am seeing similar issues.  I frequently leav...

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[Scott Fringer]

Marion,
I do use mark all read, but only within NewsRob not from notifications. Also, I use it mostly from within a specific feed, not within a group of feeds.

Scott

On Jan 3, 2010 9:14 AM, "Mariano Kamp" <marian...@gmail.com> wrote:

Scott, thanks for adding your experience here.

Do you use mark all read from time to time? Do you use notifications and mark all read there?

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Scott Fringer <scott....@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I've just recently joined this group, but believe I am seeing similar issues.  I frequently leav...

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[Henrik Heimbuerger]

FWIW, I never use Mark All Read (anywhere) and I never have the issue described above.

On Jan 3, 2010 3:19 PM, "Scott Fringer" <scott....@gmail.com> wrote:

Marion,
I do use mark all read, but only within NewsRob not from notifications. Also, I use it mostly from within a specific feed, not within a group of feeds.

Scott

> > On Jan 3, 2010 9:14 AM, "Mariano Kamp" <marian...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Scott, thanks for ad...

> Do you use mark all read from time to time? Do you use notifications and mark all read there? >

> On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 3:08 PM, Scott Fringer <scott....@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I've just recently joined this group, but believe I am seeing similar issues.  I frequently leav...

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> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NewsRob User Group" ...

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[Mariano Kamp]

And do you use "Keep and Sync: Unread Articles Only (Experimental)"?

Also could you please use "Unhide Read Articles" and watch out for articles that are suddenly marked as read ... **and** ... if they are marked up with a "*" with white letters on an orange background?

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[Disconnect]

Market non-experimental version, mark-all-read is definitely decimating feeds. I'll email the log privately (unfortunately its a couple of days worth of logs, but the last sync should be the one with the issue)

The web interface had a couple of thousand entries (at least) and after marking about 600 read in NR (mostly using mark-all-read) I was down to 40 entries on the web.

[Mariano Kamp]

Thanks.

So you had thousands, like say 3,000, marked 600 as read and now instead of having 2,400 unread in your account, you only have 40? Something like that, right?

That's very, very odd. Because I explicitly mark each article with its atom id as read and transmit it this way to Google Reader. The example from above would mean I have marked more than 2,000 as read in one go. With the  maximum capacity in NewsRob set to 1,000 I cannot have more than 2,000 ids at a time. 

So if you confirm my initial statement from above it seems that I there issue happens when I use the GR API. Maybe I am doing it wrong.

I am still wondering how I could trigger this issue and can create a reproducible test case?!

Btw. I saw in the log, that at least one sync was ended by the OS, so maybe it is a good idea to activate the setForeground() magic and, like Locale, sport a status bar icon during the sync. We'll see. Maybe I will make this optional.

[Scott Fringer]

Mariano,

I use the option to sync all content (non-experimental).

Scott

On Jan 3, 2010 9:16 AM, "Mariano Kamp" <marian...@gmail.com> wrote:

And do you use "Keep And Sync: Unread Articles Only (Experimental)"?

On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Mariano Kamp <marian...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Scott, thanks for...

[Mariano Kamp]

Hi,

it might be that the latest changes healed the syncing / unread articles issue, but as I can't reproduce the issue at will I can't be sure that it is gone either. I want to keep going and look at other places where the bug might originate.

In the process of reviewing my code I extracted the actual logic in pseudo code without all the error handling / layer mapping etc. and wanted to share that with you as so many of you are software developers and might be interested in having a look too and might spot a logic error.

I pasted the code of the down-sync (fetchNewArticles - UI: "Fetching new articles from Google Reader" ) and the up-sync (syncStates - UI: "Synchronize status of changed articles with Google Reader") here: 

    http://pastebin.com/m2b087d6c

I hope this approach makes sense. Let me know. If I don't get any feedback that's fine too.

--

[Disconnect]

(Sorry for not getting back sooner, lasik ate me for a few days and I wasn't really using NR)

I just tested with the more-logging version you emailed me about and it seems to be working fine now (alternately, I can't reproduce it as easily as I thought.) Did mark-all-as-read on a couple of feeds and checked from th web, the remaining articles still remain.

[Mariano Kamp]

Could you please use that version: link It's my fault, but I don't remember to a 100% what version I gave you, but I think it was the one without the fix and only more logging.

That's the beauty of this bug. You can't really force it and so it's hard to decide if it's gone or not. On the other hand with each day the probability gets higher that users will hit the "friends with an s"-bug and so I'd like to publish as soon as possible. I guess that the old version contained the bug already, so it should be "ok" anyway, but would possibly mean if there is another cause for the bug I will have to issue another update soon.

You had your eyes improved? Would love to hear your experience in a year or so.

[Scott Fringer]

Over the last few releases I no longer seem to be seeing unexpected 'marked as read' actions occurring. (I know this is a tad late; but I wanted to provide the data point). The effort is much appreciated Mariano!

Thanks,
Scott

[Mariano Kamp]

Thanks Scott. That is helpful and lets me sleep better. I also didn't see any more occurences even though I am using Mark All Read like crazy now.

Also another bug in this area has been discovered by another NewsRob user and was then fixed. The issue was that I ask GR for all unread ids and then mark everything that is not within those unread ids as read (slightly simplified). The user had the issue that he uses a proxy that returns a webpage saying that there currently is no connection and the webserver gives the status 200 - OK. My code then parses the XML (XHTML) and doesn't complain, but also didn't get any unread IDs.

The lack of unread ids lead to all articles been set to read, although the server side state was not altered.

I didn't check for that before, but since NewsRob 3.5.1 it is checked that a specific element needs to be in the response to make it valid.

[Scott Fringer]

Mariano;

I appreciate the detailed follow-up. Like you, I have been using the 'Mark All Read' fairly often, and have seen no recurrence of unexpected articles getting marked read (currently on 3.5.2).

Thanks,
Scott

[kl]

Hi, there. I have the opposite problem. NR marks items "read" as I
read them, but no longer communicates this to GR. Am I doing
something incorrectly? I just tried switching to syncing unread items
only. But since it pulled this from GR, rather than telling GR what
I've read, I have 8 million (not literally) posts to go through, most
of which I've read already.

It appears I'm the only one who has mentioned this (search didn't turn
up anything). Is there something incorrect in what I'm doing?

Thanks for any help you can give!
Kate

[Mariano Kamp]

Hi Kate,

sorry to hear that. I am sure we can figure this out quickly though, but I need more information.

What version of NewsRob are you using?

Could you please install the free "Log Collector" app from the Android Market? Please open NewsRob then and do a "Refresh" twice(!), then directly afterward launch the Log Collector and send the logfile to marian...@gmail.com

Thanks for checking the archives first.

Cheers,

Mariano

[Mark Otway]

Kate,

I'm sure Mariano will help you find the cause, he's really helpful like that. But one thing you might want to check is whether you have reception at the end of a 'reading session'?

I read my Newsrob content on the train, and finish when I arrive at London Waterloo. Signal is always patchy on the approach which means that if I stop reading 5 mind before and then get my coat on etc, the 5-minute-gap that Newsrob waits before synchronizing the read articles back to Google reader happens just when I'm out of signal. This means the auto-sync doesn't work so well (I've discussed NR periodically retrying if the update fails - I think it's on Mariano's very long list of planned enhancements).

But what this means in effect is that occasionally I have to do a manual sync when I get to the office, and Newsrob then updates everything as expected and Google Reader shows the correct stste. If you try that does it work for you?

Mark

On 5 Feb 2010 05:58, "kl" <klev...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, there.  I have the opposite problem.  NR marks items "read" as I
read them, but no longer communicates this to GR.  Am I doing
something incorrectly?  I just tried switching to syncing unread items
only.  But since it pulled this from GR, rather than telling GR what
I've read, I have 8 million (not literally) posts to go through, most
of which I've read already.

It appears I'm the only one who has mentioned this (search didn't turn
up anything).  Is there something incorrect in what I'm doing?

Thanks for any help you can give!
Kate

On Jan 12, 7:15 am, Scott Fringer <scott.frin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mariano;
>

>   I appreciate t...

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[kl]

Hi, Guys! Oh, boy - I'm sorry it's been a month since I was last
here. Absolutely ridiculous.

I do actually use the manual sync quite often, but unfortunately it
doesn't seem to solve the problem.

Mariano, I have version 3.6.3 installed. If it helps to know this,
I'm running it on an HTC Droid Eris. I'll go pick up log collector
right away and send the log your way.

Thanks so much for your help!
Kate

On Feb 5, 12:23 am, Mark Otway <m...@otway.com> wrote:
> Kate,
>
> I'm sure Mariano will help you find the cause, he's really helpful like
> that. But one thing you might want to check is whether you have reception at
> the end of a 'reading session'?
>
> I read my Newsrob content on the train, and finish when I arrive at London
> Waterloo. Signal is always patchy on the approach which means that if I stop
> reading 5 mind before and then get my coat on etc, the 5-minute-gap that
> Newsrob waits before synchronizing the read articles back to Google reader
> happens just when I'm out of signal. This means the auto-sync doesn't work
> so well (I've discussed NR periodically retrying if the update fails - I
> think it's on Mariano's very long list of planned enhancements).
>
> But what this means in effect is that occasionally I have to do a manual
> sync when I get to the office, and Newsrob then updates everything as
> expected and Google Reader shows the correct stste. If you try that does it
> work for you?
>
> Mark
>

[Mariano Kamp]

Looking forward to the log ;)

I am traveling until Friday, so I will be a bit slow to respond.