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Re: "Archived-At" headers

2014-03-08 11:36:21
(Since this affects everybody, I've kept it on ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org,
but feel free to switch to tools-discuss(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org if you prefer.)

On 09/03/2014 04:47, Henrik Levkowetz wrote:
Hi Brian,

On 2014-03-08 16:07 Brian E Carpenter said the following:
Henrik,

I find the new archive highly inconvenient for reviewing a thread
or a chronological sequence on a given list. This can be done
at glance with the old archives with one line per message. With
the new one, it's matter of figuring what filter to set up. I have
found it *much* harder to find a particular thread than with the
old archive.

Ok.  I thought we'd provided for this, but if what we've done isn't good
enough, we may need to do something more about it.

The intention was that the 'Group by Thread' button above the list of
messages, to the left of the search field, should provide a thread view.

However, I find that for the main IETF list, getting a thread-sorted
view is unbearably slow, while it works OK for the WG lists I've just
checked.  Personally I find that I still miss some kind of indication
of where each thread starts, though.

Yes, and searching for a thread when you remember the approximate
date and the topic, but not the actual text in the Subject, is
not easy. With the old archive you can page down quite quickly
and do a quick scan of the Subject headers.

Please consider providing a subject-threaded and a topic-threaded
view of a single list into the new archive. We definitely need
a view equivalent to this one for every list:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/apps-discuss/current/maillist.html

That's the date/time sorted view of the old archive.  If I in the new
archive (taking the long route here, to make sure that my assumptions
are explicit ) go to the main page:

  https://mailarchive.ietf.org

and click on 'browse' underneath the search field, I get to the page
listing all the list archives:

  https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/

Here I click on the list in your example, 'apps-discuss', which gives
me a (by default) date-sorted view of the apps-discuss list, where I
see a list of the latest messages for apps-discuss.  I can scroll the
message list pane, to see earlier messages, and also expand the list
page to show a larger number of messages at one time.  (There's a bug
which doen't fill the list pane fully if you expand the size beyond the
preloaded list entries, but this will be fixed shortly.)

I've enclosed a screen capture image to illustrate what I see at this
point.

Thanks, that's good to know. I compared results from the new tool at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/search/?email_list=ipv6
and the old tool at
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ipv6/current/maillist.html

With default font size, I get more messages per screen with the
old tool, and I get the senders' screen names rather than their
email addresses.

However, the main thing I lack with the new tool is the "Next Page"
button that allows me to jump back in time by a reasonable quantum.
If the new tool had "Back one month" and "Back one year" buttons
to supplement "Past month" and "Past year", I would be much happier.
(Probably corresponding "Forward" buttons would be needed too.)


A generalised search tool does not provide the same convenience.

Agreed; it was our intention to provide also thread-grouped views,
and the list date-ordered view I described above.

Also it would be handy to have a way to download a raw archive.

This should be available from the 'Export' dropdown in the upper right-
hand corner, in both mbox and (gzipped tar) Maildir format; if used for
an unfiltered list view it should export the list archive; if used with
a search it should export the search results.

OK; the only thing is that on my screen, the Export button is obscured
behind the results window. So I didn't even know it was there ;-)

Getting back to Bjoern's original point, I think it would be
valuable if the page for an individual message include a link
back into the search mechanism (not just the sign in link).


Anyway - thanks for all the work on the new tool. I'm sure
it will end up being very valuable.

    Brian


Best regards,

      Henrik

Regards
   Brian

On 09/03/2014 03:44, Henrik Levkowetz wrote:
Hi Björn, Dale,

On 2014-03-07 23:02 Bjoern Hoehrmann said the following:
* Dale R. Worley wrote:
I've noticed that recently messages to the Ietf mailing list have been
sprouting "Archived-At" headers.  This seems to be a great
convenience.  But when I attempted to use one of these links,
http://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/rvA1yLD7Ds2BAxWYv3iN1ONAxJs
it turned out not to be what I expected -- it contained the message,
but none of the threading that I've learned to love in IETF mail
archives.
Right.  However, updating the single-message view is on the to-do list.

Which is all rather odd, since there *is* a URL that goes to the
"real" archive, and does give access to the threading:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg86465.html
Why is that URL not put into the Archived-At header?
2 reasons:

  * That URL goes to the old archives, not to the new archives
    at mailarchive.ietf.org.  We're aiming at phasing out the old
    archives once it's been established that the new service is
    solid.

  * That url will break if for some reason the archive pages have to
    be re-generated due to later inclusion of list messages which didn't
    originally make it into the archive for one reason or another.  It's
    happened a few times, and the way MHonArc generates the web pages
    guarantees breakage if a dropped message has to be added.  This is not
    the case with the current Archived-At headers, which use a hash 
generated
    by hashing Message-ID and list acronym, and is independent of any 
particular
    sequence or ordering of messages in the list archive.

Though to put the shoe on the other foot, I notice that the *former*
archive will show me the full headers of the message if I want, but
the latter archive won't.
Yes.  The latter (the old MHonArc archive) only includes some selected
headers in what's made available in the web page; one of many deficiencies
the new archive software aim to fix.

I assume there are some technical reasons, Henrik Levkowetz (copied)
might be able to comment.
I hope the information above helps.


Best regards,

    Henrik




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