For years the fact that Discourse didn’t offer to “save draft for later” meant that it wouldn’t be saved. For example because you hadn’t entered enough characters.
Now I never know if I am loosing my draft or not. I can no longer use the button next to “create topic” that confirms that the draft can be saved. I can only choose “discard” which means I will delete it, or “cancel” which just takes me back to the composer. Or I can try clicking the “x” way over on the other side of the screen and hope that the toast message will say “Draft saved.” Maybe it won’t, because my draft wasn’t long enough - but by then it’s too late, it’s already gone.
Is there a way to check whether my draft was saved before risking to loose it that I might have missed? Checking the list of my current drafts before closing the composer works, but it’s a pretty annoying workaround.
I also preferred having the button on the left, because that’s where my focus is while writing. It’s where I see the composer window and where I interact with the toolbar. Sometimes I glance at the preview on the right, but most of the time I’m focused on the left. That’s where all my interaction happens. That’s another reason why I usually preferred to use that button even though it meant an extra click.
Thanks for telling me. I cannot see texts that appear on hover on my tablet, that’s why I didn’t know about it, but that’s also why it doesn’t really help me.
But I am curious: What does the button say when you click “new topic” and enter only a few characters into the composer? Discourse doesn’t save drafts with less than the minimum required characters, so I wonder what the text on hover says in this case. Does it still say “save and close” then, and does it really save your draft in that case? Or does it simply say “close” without “save”?
I know this sounds like I would also lose only a few characters in that case, but actually you can quote quite a few posts and enter only a few characters and decide to continue later. Since Discourse doesn’t count characters in quotes, I sometimes stay below 20 characters before I decide to continue later. That’s how I lost quite a few drafts, and finding all those quotes again is not that fun. That’s why I prefer to ensure my draft actually gets saved.
I’m not sure the save button would have helped in this particular case.
But losing drafts for whatever reason is never fun. And the fact that Discourse doesn’t save drafts until you’ve entered 20 characters means that when I start quoting other posts, I can easily lose everything - because quotes don’t count toward that limit. So I can add one or even several quotes I want to refer to, and as soon as I close the composer, everything is gone. There’s no warning that, even though there may be hundreds of characters visible in my composer, nothing will actually be saved. That’s where this button was helpful: it indicated that Discourse considered my post long enough to start saving it.
I often close the composer for various reasons - for example, when someone replies to me in another topic and I want to answer there first, or when I want to test something before continuing, or simply because I prefer to continue on my laptop instead of the tablet. In all these cases, the quotes I’ve already added are lost when I come back, and I have to search for those posts again. That’s exactly what I’d like to avoid. That’s why it has always been important to me to make sure that my draft is being saved.
Of course, that doesn’t protect against bugs, but at least it protects against the normal behavior that has caused me to lose drafts before.
Edit: I tested on a forum which is on a version before the discard button was changed. The missing “saved draft” option would have indicated that something was wrong with the draft. When I started my draft and closed it using the discard button, “saved draft for later” was shown:
We made an update to ensure we’re always saving drafts when there is any content in the title or composer text area fields, so you shouldn’t run into this issue again. Whenever you close the composer with content in these areas, a draft will be saved (unless you close the composer via the Discard button).
So, if you had closed the composer after adding the two quotes to my post, they would have still been there once you reopened it?
I think I would still prefer an option to close on the left where my focus is while writing, and I’d also still like to check that a draft I care about is really saved and there is no bug preventing that. Spending an hour on a draft and losing it taught me the hard way not to trust auto-saving.
I think there may be some edge cases… I notice if I start a new topic draft and close it, that gets saved. If I open another new topic draft (I have no other windows open), I get a draft conflict warning, and then if I save that draft… the original is replaced?
이것이 적절한 장소인지, 아니면 Discourse Suggested Edits 이 더 나은 장소인지 확신이 서지 않습니다. 하지만 플러그인이 컴포저를 닫을 때 거기서 작성한 변경 사항을 저장하지 않는 것 같습니다. 아직 실험 단계이므로 괜찮지만, 미리 알았으면 좋았을 텐데 말입니다…
그리고 제가 여기에 게시하는 이유입니다. 삭제된 다이얼로그는 이러한 피드백을 제공했고, 저는 여전히 그 기능을 그리워합니다. 초안을 잃어버리는 일은 일어나지 않아야 하지만, 제안된 편집은 6개월 동안 제가 이 문제를 초안을 잃지 않고 잡을 수 있었을 것이라고 생각한 세 번째 이유입니다. 불행히도, 보통 더 긴 게시물이 이 문제에 영향을 받는데, 제가 작업하다 중간에 컴포저를 닫는 것이 바로 그런 긴 글이기 때문입니다.
만약 그렇다면, 20자 미만인 경우에도 여전히 저장되지 않았을 것이며, 인용문이 2개인 작성기 역시 저장되지 않았을 것입니다. 하지만 위에서 제가 드린 예시와 비교하면, 해당 예시들은 정상적으로 작동합니다:
결국, 제가 원했던 아이디어는 Discourse가 항상 자동으로 저장하기 때문에 제가 저장 여부를 확인해야 할 필요가 없어야 한다는 것이었습니다. 글자 수가 적거나 인용문이 적더라도 마찬가지입니다.
제 문제는 이것이 항상 작동하지 않는다는 것입니다. 그리고 작성기를 닫고 나서 저장 알림이 표시되지 않는 것을 보고야 비로소 알게 됩니다. 그때쯤이면 모든 것이 이미 사라져 있습니다. 이전 버튼이 있었을 때는 모달 창에서 저장이 제공되는지 확인할 수 있었기 때문에, 실패할 경우를 손실 전에 알 수 있었고, 저장 기준을 충족시키기 위해 그에 맞춰 내용을 추가할 수 있었습니다.
