Forum Weirdness

Toad for Oracle & DevOps Toolkit
1

Morning All, (Well, it is here!)

I follow along on the Toad for Oracle, Toad Beta, Toad SQL and TDM

forums to get my daily dose of all things Toad related.

I have noticed a couple of foibles that are, sadly, driving me even

madder than I normally am.

  1. All the emails I get are timed at the date and time I download them.

For example, today’s batch of overnight email postings are all times at

08:28 AM which is when my email system decided to check. When I check

last night on my tablet, the same ones came down at 23:23 (I know, I

should be asleep!) and if I check on my phone at lunchtime in the

office, well, they come down at lunchtime.

I have my laptop set up as my main email client and when it downloads

from the server, the emails are deleted. The other devices just pull

down whatever they haven’t received yet. Hence I can get the same emails

at different times on different devices.

  1. Because they all come down at the same time, my sort order of

date/Descending is useless - everything gets sorted by the exact same

date and time, so threading (see below) is almost impossible and it;s

difficult to determine the correct order of correspondence in some of

the longer threads.

  1. I can cope with the above to a certain extent, however, threading is

totally broken I’m afraid. I have separate folders in Thunderbird for

Toad, Beta, TDM, SQL etc and all are sorted into date descending order,

and threaded. As mentioned above, sorting by date is hopeless as they

all have the same date & time, but nothing at all is threaded. This

makes it even more difficult to follow along the thread of conversation.

  1. Sometimes when I reply to an email, nothing happens! I get no copies

of my own email - which might be a setting in the forum of course - and

in about 25% of the cases when I reply, nothing happens at all, it never

hits the forum, so no-one can see my replies and general usefulness!

(Ok, I lied about being useful!)

  1. It’s got to the stage where I now tend to login to the forum and

respond there, and when I paste SQL into the reply area, it all looks

fine, but then when submitted, I get blank lines between each line of

pasted code which just looks bad and means that anyone copying my code

has to then “post process” it to get rid of the empty lines before it

can be used.

For what it’s worth, the laptop is a Dell Vostro 1720 64 bit running

Linux Mint 17.3 and Thunderbird 38.5.1.

The phone is a Samsung Note 3 running Android 5.0 and the tablet is

another Samsung running Android 5.0 as well, both are running the latest

K9 email client. However, I think the problem is at the forum end.

I’m sure I’m not the only one with these observations? I’m also sure

that this isn’t the correct place to be discussing this problem, so feel

free to point me elsewhere, thanks.

Sorry about the eRant. :wink:

–

Cheers,

Norm. [TeamT]

2

Hey Norm…Rant away but this should probably go on the main TW community forum instead of the TO forum. Unfortunately, the local Toadies here don’t have the ability to make the changes directly but I’ll make sure that the “powers that be” are made aware. :slight_smile:

www.toadworld.com/…/123

From: Norm [TeamT] [mailto:bounce-NormTeamT@toadworld.com]

Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2016 4:07 AM

To: toadoracle@toadworld.com

Subject: [Toad for Oracle - Discussion Forum] Forum Weirdness

Forum Weirdness

Thread created by Norm [TeamT]

Morning All, (Well, it is here!)

I follow along on the Toad for Oracle, Toad Beta, Toad SQL and TDM

forums to get my daily dose of all things Toad related.

I have noticed a couple of foibles that are, sadly, driving me even

madder than I normally am.

  1. All the emails I get are timed at the date and time I download them.

For example, today’s batch of overnight email postings are all times at

08:28 AM which is when my email system decided to check. When I check

last night on my tablet, the same ones came down at 23:23 (I know, I

should be asleep!) and if I check on my phone at lunchtime in the

office, well, they come down at lunchtime.

I have my laptop set up as my main email client and when it downloads

from the server, the emails are deleted. The other devices just pull

down whatever they haven’t received yet. Hence I can get the same emails

at different times on different devices.

  1. Because they all come down at the same time, my sort order of

date/Descending is useless - everything gets sorted by the exact same

date and time, so threading (see below) is almost impossible and it;s

difficult to determine the correct order of correspondence in some of

the longer threads.

  1. I can cope with the above to a certain extent, however, threading is

totally broken I’m afraid. I have separate folders in Thunderbird for

Toad, Beta, TDM, SQL etc and all are sorted into date descending order,

and threaded. As mentioned above, sorting by date is hopeless as they

all have the same date & time, but nothing at all is threaded. This

makes it even more difficult to follow along the thread of conversation.

  1. Sometimes when I reply to an email, nothing happens! I get no copies

of my own email - which might be a setting in the forum of course - and

in about 25% of the cases when I reply, nothing happens at all, it never

hits the forum, so no-one can see my replies and general usefulness!

(Ok, I lied about being useful!)

  1. It’s got to the stage where I now tend to login to the forum and

respond there, and when I paste SQL into the reply area, it all looks

fine, but then when submitted, I get blank lines between each line of

pasted code which just looks bad and means that anyone copying my code

has to then “post process” it to get rid of the empty lines before it

can be used.

For what it’s worth, the laptop is a Dell Vostro 1720 64 bit running

Linux Mint 17.3 and Thunderbird 38.5.1.

The phone is a Samsung Note 3 running Android 5.0 and the tablet is

another Samsung running Android 5.0 as well, both are running the latest

K9 email client. However, I think the problem is at the forum end.

I’m sure I’m not the only one with these observations? I’m also sure

that this isn’t the correct place to be discussing this problem, so feel

free to point me elsewhere, thanks.

Sorry about the eRant. :wink:

–

Cheers,

Norm. [TeamT]

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3

Hi Norm,

I’ll have the TW admins take care of this. Sorry about the inconvenience!

John

4

And we left Yahoo Groups for this!

#4: You don't get copies of your replies... this is not sometimes, it's every time. This is a major pain and has been mentioned to the admins on more than one occasion. The forum software we're using broke this many months ago with an update. I don't know if it's been fixed yet or what our plans are for upgrading to the latest version, but I hope it's resolved quickly.

Not seeing your own replies wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for your other point, messages not posting. That has been another ongoing issue, but has been much better in recent months. I can't remember when I last encountered it, but I've hit it so many times in the past that I don't trust reply by email at all. When they do post it's usually many minutes after the email was sent.

#1, 2, and 3: I don't see the timestamp problems you see on Xubuntu 14.04/Thunderbird 24.4.0. I can't upgrade Thunderbird because of problems with Exquilla and newer versions.

I do have an issue with internal email generated from a SharePoint site. Thunderbird butchers those, but Outlook has no problems. You are using two mail clients, but what if something about the mail format is problematic for both? Have you tried using webmail to see what the timestamp shows? If that's buggered too perhaps setup a secondary account with another email provider to rule out your email server.

Michael

On 02/11/2016 04:07 AM, Norm [TeamT] wrote:

Forum Weirdness

Thread created by Norm [TeamT]
Morning All, (Well, it is here!)

I follow along on the Toad for Oracle, Toad Beta, Toad SQL and TDM

forums to get my daily dose of all things Toad related.

I have noticed a couple of foibles that are, sadly, driving me even

madder than I normally am.

  1. All the emails I get are timed at the date and time I download them.

For example, today's batch of overnight email postings are all times at

08:28 AM which is when my email system decided to check. When I check

last night on my tablet, the same ones came down at 23:23 (I know, I

should be asleep!) and if I check on my phone at lunchtime in the

office, well, they come down at lunchtime.

I have my laptop set up as my main email client and when it downloads

from the server, the emails are deleted. The other devices just pull

down whatever they haven't received yet. Hence I can get the same emails

at different times on different devices.

  1. Because they all come down at the same time, my sort order of

date/Descending is useless - everything gets sorted by the exact same

date and time, so threading (see below) is almost impossible and it;s

difficult to determine the correct order of correspondence in some of

the longer threads.

  1. I can cope with the above to a certain extent, however, threading is

totally broken I'm afraid. I have separate folders in Thunderbird for

Toad, Beta, TDM, SQL etc and all are sorted into date descending order,

and threaded. As mentioned above, sorting by date is hopeless as they

all have the same date & time, but nothing at all is threaded. This

makes it even more difficult to follow along the thread of conversation.

  1. Sometimes when I reply to an email, nothing happens! I get no copies

of my own email - which might be a setting in the forum of course - and

in about 25% of the cases when I reply, nothing happens at all, it never

hits the forum, so no-one can see my replies and general usefulness!

(Ok, I lied about being useful!)

  1. It's got to the stage where I now tend to login to the forum and

respond there, and when I paste SQL into the reply area, it all looks

fine, but then when submitted, I get blank lines between each line of

pasted code which just looks bad and means that anyone copying my code

has to then "post process" it to get rid of the empty lines before it

can be used.

For what it's worth, the laptop is a Dell Vostro 1720 64 bit running

Linux Mint 17.3 and Thunderbird 38.5.1.

The phone is a Samsung Note 3 running Android 5.0 and the tablet is

another Samsung running Android 5.0 as well, both are running the latest

K9 email client. However, I think the problem is at the forum end.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with these observations? I'm also sure

that this isn't the correct place to be discussing this problem, so feel

free to point me elsewhere, thanks.

Sorry about the eRant. :wink:

--

Cheers,

Norm. [TeamT]

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Stop receiving emails on this subject.

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5

Many thanks John and Gregory.

John, how are you doing these days? Good I hope. Long time no hear.

Take care.

Cheers,

Norm. [TeamT]

On 11/02/16 12:36, John Pocknell wrote:

*RE: Forum Weirdness

Reply by John Pocknell

Hi Norm,

I'll have the TW admins take care of this. Sorry about the inconvenience!

John

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--

Cheers,

Norm. [TeamT]

6

Norm, we will look into these issues.

#1. Most likely that there is an issue is with your email server (and/or client). Sender (Toad World) can’t affect “received” time-stamp once the email is sent out.

Norm, Michael,

#4 Notification of own post / reply will be back by popular demand when we upgrade to the next version of the platform. We will keep you posted on the timeline for that.

7

Morning Michael,

And we left Yahoo Groups for this!

I get the impression you are not too keen, I don’t know why, it's just an inkling! :wink:

...

Not seeing your own replies wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for your other point,

messages not posting. That has been another ongoing issue, but has been much better in

recent months. I can't remember when I last encountered it, ...

I've had quite a few in the last few months to be honest. Plus, as you mention, the lack of feedback - but I see that that's coming back soon! Good news.

#1, 2, and 3: I don't see the timestamp problems you see on Xubuntu 14.04/Thunderbird

24.4.0. I can't upgrade Thunderbird because of problems with Exquilla and newer

versions.

Every other forum, oracle-l for example, plus some QT stuff and my reptiles forums have no problems on Thunderbird or K9 on my Androids. They all thread perfectly well and have the date and time that the email was SENT as opposed to received. I suspect there's a couple of headers not being sent out with the email, one to determine the thread and another for the data and time sent by the original poster.

Of course, it's possible that everyone is having to use the Web interface to the forums as email is dropping postings, that could explain the lack of sent times perhaps?

I do have an issue with internal email generated from a SharePoint site. Thunderbird

butchers those, but Outlook has no problems.

Maybe that's deliberate! :wink: Sharepoint is pretty much butchered anyway. I've had more than one rant about it in past contracts. If Sharepoint had been a dog, I'm afraid it's future would be bleak, and short! (And I like dogs!)

You are using two mail clients, but what if something about the mail format is problematic

for both? Have you tried using webmail to see what the timestamp shows? If that's

buggered too perhaps setup a secondary account with another email provider to rule out

your email server.

I have a web mail interface with 1 and 1, I'll see what's going on with it there. Ok I checked. There are a couple of spam emails in there, so not from the forums, but they have correct dates and times showing. I've shut down my main email client so it doesn't grab everything and delete it. I'll check back later when (hopefully) more people have posted.

Cheers,

Norm.

8

Hi Bogdan-Sahajev

#1. Most likely that there is an issue is with your email server (and/or client). Sender

(Toad World) can't affect "received" time-stamp once the email is sent out.

But it's not the date received that is the problem, I should be seeing the date and time that the message was (first) sent to the mailing list/forum. I'm seeing them all with the date and time I downloaded them, which is simply incorrect.

I've done a bit of investigation. In Thunderbird go to View->Headers->All and select a message in, for example, Oracle-L or ANTLR Discussion list. These come to my Toad account and are correctly threaded and have the correct date time stamps.

The ANTLR message I'm looking at has a displayed date of "11/02/16 16:10" in dd/mm/yy hh24:mi format because I'm in the UK.

Looking at the headers, of which there are many with dates in, I see one entitled "Date" which has the value "11/02/16 08:10:18 (-08:00) PST" That corresponds exactly with what I see in Thunderbird's display. (And, indeed, on my Android devices with K9 email client).

Taking your own message from the Toad Forum next, there is no "Date" header present. So this might be the reason that I'n unable to see the correct dates and times and this obviously affects the sorting order of the thread too.

There's another header with the correct date in the ANTLR email, it's the first "x-received" header. There's none of these on the Toad emails. Your email on the web forum page shows a date and time of "11 Feb 2016 at 5:34pm".

Other emails from Toad World do have a "Date" header, the emails I get when one of the affiliated blogs makes a new posting, for example, all have a "Date" header and I do get the proper date and time here.

It appears that the "Date" header is one of the (two) minimum requirements for an email. ( RFC 5322 (specifically, Section 3.6, the table on Page 20) tools.ietf.org/.../rfc5322))

Similarly, in correctly threaded messages, the original message has a "Message ID" header. Any replies to that one have an "in-reply-to" header with the message id of the message being replied to. None of the Toad World messages have the "in-reply-to" header, so threading cannot be done.

Bear in mind that I'm an Oracle DBA by trade and not an email expert, so some or all of the above might be leading you up the wrong path!

Thanks a lot in the meantime. I'm glad to hear that I'll be getting my own feedback with the next upgrade.

Cheers,

Norm. [TeamT]

9

PS. wesmorgan.blogspot.co.uk/…/understanding-email-headers-part-ii.html has a lot of good information on how an email should be setup for standards compliand and threading.

Cheers,

Norm.

10

If I may post mine thought.

There is no way to exclude posts based on language filter.

Why is this important.

I get many post on Spanish, language I do not understand and do not want read, so i have to delete those posts manually all the time.

So please introduce some language filter.

Thx

Damir

11

This feature doesn’t exist nor is it necessary. Just delete those you don’t care to keep like you do with all other email. If you view the message on the forum it should be translated for you, but not all messages translate well. I’ve seen some that were OK, but others that weren’t.

From: Damir Vadas [mailto:bounce-damirvadas_250@toadworld.com]

Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2016 3:17 AM

To: toadoracle@toadworld.com

Subject: RE: [Toad for Oracle - Discussion Forum] Forum Weirdness

RE: Forum Weirdness

Reply by Damir Vadas

If I may post mine thought.

There is no way to exclude posts based on language filter.

Why is this important.

I get many post on Spanish, language I do not understand and do not want read, so i have to delete those posts manually all the time.

So please introduce some language filter.

Thx

Damir

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