[Pmwiki-users] Test of page drafts

[John Rankin]

(was Autosave on Preview)

Page drafts address the following needs:
- the internet connection breaks during a long edit and you lose your changes

- your computer stops working and you lose your changes

- you want to check a proposed change with others before saving it

- you want to keep working on a new page before releasing it

- you just forget to press Save

There is a demonstration at:
http://intranet.affinity.co.nz/wiki/DraftWP/Purpose

Follow the trail link (-->) at the bottom of the page.

On an Edit Page, the Preview button changes to Preview and Save Draft. 
When you press the button, the wiki writes the changed page to a 
temporary location. When you press Save, it saves the page and deletes 
the draft. If you don't press Save, the next time you Edit, the wiki 
gives you the draft (if a draft exists, the link changes to Edit Page 
Draft). If there is no draft to edit, it gives you the original.

A page can be in one of 4 states:
- page exists
- page and page draft exist
- page draft exists, page doesn't exist
- page doesn't exist

The demonstration includes examples of each. If both a page and a draft 
exist, you can toggle between views.

For demonstration purposes, links to pages that also have a draft 
include a link to the draft. This can and probably should be turned off.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

I worry that in practice this is quite confusing the first time you
see it -- so it might not be suitable for new wiki authors.

The code needs to be tidied up, but if there is interest, I'll add it 
to the Cookbook.

Credit to Mirko Froehlich for the initial suggestion. And thanks to 
all those who have contributed ideas to the thread along the way. 
-- 
JR
--
John Rankin