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

John Rankin john.rankin
Mon Jul 12 18:39:18 CDT 2004


On Monday, 12 July 2004 8:58 PM, Christian Ridderstr?m <chr at home.se> wrote:
>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".

For a local customisation, it's more work to add a new button 
than to change the wording of an existing button. How about
'Preview & 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.

Yup, the <a> ref will include title='View page draft'.

>
>> 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.

Yup.

>
>> 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.

Probably in the place that the * goes on normal browse view.

>
>> 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

How about:

>> Group                           Recent Changes
>> Page Name*                                 ...
>>                                     *Edit Page

and clicking the * brings you to:

>> Group                           Recent Changes
>> Page Name Draft                            ...
>>                                     *Edit Page

and possibly (see below) clicking the Draft deletes the
draft version; or, clicking Draft /edits/ the draft and
*Edit Page becomes Delete Draft

>
>
>> 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.

We should be able to support the following:
- to prevent unauthorised viewing of a draft, set a read
  password for the 'draft' action
- to prevent unauthorised saving of a draft, set an edit
  password for the edit and post action

So in theory, we should be able to let anyone edit, but only
those with a password can save.

>
>> 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.

Yup

>
>> 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?

Yup -- still not sure the best way to show this. I don't
particularly like putting Delete where Edit normally goes (above).
Muscle memory will cause people to delete when they mean to edit 
and there's no way back.

>
>> 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?

Not supported for a 1.0 local customisation. I thought about
giving people the option to Edit Draft or Edit Original, but
it just got too confusing. I think writers ought to make a
conscious decision to delete a draft, rather than have it
happen as a side-effect of editing the original.

>
>Maybe it'd be best to implement it and see how it works?
>
I'll see what I can come up with.

-- 
JR
--
John Rankin





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