[Pmwiki-users] Re: Re: Autosave on Preview

[Christian Ridderström]

On 12 Jul 2004, John Rankin wrote:

> On Sunday, 11 July 2004 12:10 PM, J. Meijer <commentgg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >I too think allowing drafts and support for approval/peer review would be
> >cool. I see a wiki mostly as a collaborative document solution.
> [snip]
> >I think this would be very cool, but maybe it's too much.

> What is the writer and reader experience?

Um.. I assume that means you want input from "users", as opposed to 
"developers" (always a good idea)?

Work flow:
> An author edits a page and presses Preview, but doesn't Save.
> We might change the Preview button to read Draft.

Maybe as "Save as draft"? Although I might prefer keeping 'Preview' and
add an additional "Save as draft".

> On normal browse viewing, the page title gains a <sup>*</sup>,
> indicating that this page has a draft associated with it.
> Clicking on the * shows a browse of the draft.

Nice! Btw, the '<sup>*</sup>' should get a title element or something that
explains what it means.

> The Edit Page link also gains a <sup>*</sup>, indicating that
> editing the page will edit the draft.

The entire 'Edit' link could get an descriptive element as well. E.g. in
normal usage the "help text" could be: "Edits the contents of this page",
but when a draft exists, the text could be changed to:
	"Edit the existing draft of this page"
I'm not sure I like these particular text messages, but you ought to get 
the idea.

> When browsing a draft, the page title loses the *, but the 
> Edit Page* link keeps it. That might be a bit too subtle --
> perhaps there should be a 'draft' watermark behind the page 
> text.

A water would be needed, or some other very visible indication I think.

> So a regular browse view looks like:
> 
> Group                           Recent Changes
> Page Name*                                 ...
>                                     Edit Page*

Maybe the '*' is more visible if we put it first?
> Group                           Recent Changes
> *Page Name                                 ...
>                                     *Edit Page


> Suppose an author creates a reference to a new page, clicks
> the ?, edits the content, presses Preview and doesn't Save.
> 
> In the referring page, instead of a ? against the page name, 
> we see a * -- clicking the * takes you to a browse of the
> draft.

Also nice.

> One might ask for a password before allowing someone to
> view a draft, if required.

I think password requirements should be same as for read/edit.

> Whenever you press Save, the draft is removed, so the 
> various * marks disappear.

Ok, so 'Page*' is only used when a "normal" page doesn't exist, but a
draft branch exists.

> So far, the draft is just 'a page that hasn't yet been
> saved' -- we need to have a way to abandon the draft
> unsaved. So I think when viewing a draft, there has to
> be an Abandon Draft (no undo) link, or something similar.

Hmm, is that what I labelled "Save as draft" earlier? Nah... you mean 
something like "Delete draft", right?

> So this scheme doesn't give multiple drafts, but is it
> sufficient as a first and minimalist attempt at the feature?
> Are there any essential capabilities missing?

I have the feeing that we're missing something here, but I can't put my 
finger on it right now... oh well, I'll just send this now. Perhaps it's 
about conflicts when two persons are working simultaneously the draft?

Maybe it'd be best to implement it and see how it works?

Nice thinking John!

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m                           http://www.md.kth.se/~chr