saving, autosaving, versioning?...

zem · 2005-11-03 22:12:46

Nice start, thanks for spending some time on it.

Technically, it’s just as difficult to handle 3 revisions as an arbitrary number, so there’s little point limiting it to that unless there’s a specific reason.

It’s not clear to me how the status would work after publication.

At any rate, I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves: solutions looking for a problem. Perhaps someone can start with some use cases. Tell us the story of Alice the Author and Eric the Editor: what are they trying to achieve, and who does what when? What’s the life cycle of an article? What are the scenarios for different types of sites, from the simplest to the most complex? (We don’t have to solve all of these problems, but it helps to know what they are)

Zanza · 2005-11-03 22:40:20

Ehm… but I started with a real case… not a scenario, but a real case! :))

Anyway, there’s 2 different problem (or solutions..), and I’m responsible for mixing them. Sorry. Let’s split them out:

1. Autosaving
2. Versioning.

One can goes without the other. Autosaving can simply be done at the “html” or “preview” tab click, or at regular intervals, without versioning. And versioning can be done even without autosaving.

I think autosaving can simply be offered as a preference option, as I said above, and that’s all. If someone need it (my author needed it…) he can use it.

Versioning is a more sophisticated problem, and I think Hakjoon made a wonderful job imagining an interface and a “way of working” of it. I vote for him! :) I’d like to modify version of an article, even a published article. I may need to work on a revision (adding link or new findings in topic) of a published article, but wait for the moment of publishing the modification, still saving them. Actually I need this, but sparingly. Still I need.

But I often need the possibility of modifying pending or draft article by my authors, at the same time preserving the original version, to discuss them, and then publishing a compromise final version. In publishing flow, not blogging, this is quite frequent. TXP would be a very mature CMS if we could do that.

Can I convince you? :)

Z-

hakjoon · 2005-11-03 23:07:46

This is more related to versioning then auto-saving (should I start a new topic?)

Here’s the use case I was thinking of and this only involves one person. It is something a lot of my small clients would need.

I write an article describing our services.
I publish it.
I start work on a new version of this page that will only go out next month with new services. The previous version should remain available while I finish this.

Currently you can’t really accomplish this. If you start editing an existing article there is no way to save those changes and keep the pre-changes version available. You could do it by setting up a section which shows one article and adding a new article but that’s a workaround imo, please let me know if I have totally overlooked existing functionality.

What I would like to do is

Publish an Article.
be able to edit a draft version of it without affecting the currently published version.
replace the published version with the new draft version.
possibly be able to “roll back” to the previously published version.

The way I saw it changing the status from draft to live would sort of effect that change, but unlike what currently happens you could have a draft version and a live version co-existing.

Does that make more sense? I’m having a hard time putting this in words.

Zanza · 2005-11-03 23:20:49

It makes a lot of sense for me. It’s not that different of my article revision need I mentioned. Yes, you could always have a different draft that “fork” the existing article, but it’s a bad workaround.

And the “moderate pending article with multiple revision mantaing old version” scenario (see above) complements this one-person need. So versioning in my opinion is a really useful feature in a number of cases.

About autosaving, I don’t know if we need a different topic: it depends on what Zem think can be useful.

Bye

Z-

Last edited by Zanza (2005-11-05 01:14:34)

zem · 2005-11-05 00:55:21

H, thanks, that’s one use case.

Can anyone suggest some others, particularly those that involve more than one user?

hakjoon · 2005-11-07 17:56:49

Nobody else? This is something I would love to see fleshed out, but I don’t have enough day to day experience to flesh out all the use cases

I can definitely see a scenario where a staff writer’s work is “drafted” until approved and pushed live by an editor but that seems to fall more into the realm of workflows then versioning.

zem · 2005-11-07 22:41:57

that seems to fall more into the realm of workflows then versioning

I think they’re one and the same. Or rather, workflow is the problem, and versioning is a possible solution.

hakjoon · 2005-11-08 00:08:26

I think you are definitely right there. Is this something you all are thinking at all about for future major revs or does it need more fleshing out, etc before it gets into the consideration bin?

zem · 2005-11-08 02:13:44

We need to know what’s involved before we could make any decisions about if or when to do it.

hakjoon · 2005-11-08 02:25:26

Makes sense. Was just curious if it was something that was being considered (I wasn’t looking for commitments on implementation or anything so please don’t take as that).

I’ll see if I can flesh out more stuff because I would definitely like to have the ability to edit a post without affecting the published version.

alannie · 2005-12-19 23:07:06

hakjoon suggested in this thread that I post an use case here. Here goes:

A website for a nonprofit organization has multiple pages requiring periodic revisions. One staff person has the main responsibility for website edits. His boss, though, needs to approve his changes before they go live. They would like a way for existing pages to be revised and saved in a format that the boss can review before the revisions go live.

Because Textpattern obviously does not have a versioning system, I was asking about the possibility of allowing writers to easily make backups of existing pages so that this staff person can at least roll back any errors he makes. But a versioning system would be much better. I like JoeyNL’s suggestion of looking at Writeboard for versioning UI ideas.

Last edited by alannie (2005-12-19 23:11:13)

zem · 2005-12-20 06:06:24

Alannie,

Can you elaborate on the steps and details as you imagine them (i.e. what each person sees, what their choices are). That’ll help clarify things, and turn up some inevitable issues.

Writeboard is worth looking at, but Textpattern would probably have to do several things that Writeboard does not. For instance, most Textpattern use cases require that the current Live/public revision of an article is not necessarily the most recent revision; Writeboard always uses the most recent rev as the “live” one. And Writeboard doesn’t have custom fields, article images, etc.

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#13 2005-11-03 22:12:46

Re: saving, autosaving, versioning?...

#14 2005-11-03 22:40:20

Re: saving, autosaving, versioning?...

#15 2005-11-03 23:07:46

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#16 2005-11-03 23:20:49

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#17 2005-11-05 00:55:21

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#18 2005-11-07 17:56:49

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#19 2005-11-07 22:41:57

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#20 2005-11-08 00:08:26

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#21 2005-11-08 02:13:44

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#22 2005-11-08 02:25:26

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#23 2005-12-19 23:07:06

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#24 2005-12-20 06:06:24

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