Handling un-saved annotations

[HeyItsBATMAN]

Since I removed the old local/offline functionality here #58, we can think about new ways to implement a "work offline, push changes later" workflow.

The old functionality was attempting to do a synchronization with 2 DBs, local and server, on any annotation update, meaning lots of requests, and lots of points of failures.

I can imagine a workflow with a lot less points of failures:

• the user has the viewer opened with a model loaded, no matter if stable internet, spotty internet, or offline (funkloch)
• the user begins adding/removing/editing annotations. as soon as something changed, they get an indicator, showing that they have unsaved changes
• these changes are kept locally, and not immediately pushed to the server
• when the user is done with changes, they can save/push these changes to the server using a e.g. "Synchronize" button, turning their unsaved changes into saved changes
• if, during this session, the user does not save/push their changes to the server, they are kept in browser storage, so if they close and re-open, their local edits will not be gone

This only has 1-2 points of failures:

• if they try to save the changes and that fails due to no connection or server error
• if they edit, it is locally saved, and then weeks later, when the object has been edited somewhere else, and the local and server annotations mismatch (this was also in the previous implementation)

This would also incorporate better UI feedback for the user about whether their changes have been saved.

This would be closer to a version control (git-like) strategy.

[HeyItsBATMAN]

@lozanaross @ZetOE what do you think about this?

Fully removing any local functionality, and 100% relying on requests to the server never timing out is not really a solution, but the old functionality was causing bugs for heavy-users (e.g. Enes, working on multiple machines, in different countries, with lots of objects having lots of annotations).

I also don't think the new functionality would be hard to implement, but we would have to make some choices of where the "Sync" button would be placed, and how to indicate to the user that they have unsaved changes (though we've talked about this in the past already iirc).

[ZetOE]

Thanks for the suggestion @HeyItsBATMAN ! I think what you explain totally makes sense. We should include @Grizzly127 for the design question and implement it as described.

[Grizzly127]

First design ideas:

Is this going into the right direction?
The user gets an information when being in the editing mode (wording needs to be adjusted), the annotation can be saved, but is then still marked with an information and with the sync-button. When it is synchronized the information box just disappears.

[HeyItsBATMAN]

The info at the bottom of the editor might be unnecessary.

Timeline looks like this:

1. User edits annotation
2. User clicks save
3. Request to server fails (user offline or server offline)
   -> Now we know that we have unsaved annotations and can display it to the viewer
4. Show in the sidebar or somewhere else in the viewer that the user has unsaved annotations

So prior to clicking "Save", we don't know yet if saving will succeed.

[Grizzly127]

Okay, so what about an information on top and then the infobox with a synchronize button for the regarding annotation. And also marking the number of the annotation in red, showing there is something missing.

maybe even marking the unsaved annotation red here: