Do we need a Cancel button for realtime editing?

[mflorea]

@vmassol

What about the following:

• I make some changes in RT, a revision is created (autosave)
• I make another change and autosave kicks in. However since there was another change done with my user, the code meres the 2 change into a single revision (ie we end up with a singe revision containing the 2 change sets). Ofc this merge stops as soon as a revision is made by someone else, but can resume if again there are contiguous revisions done by a given user.
• Also, during the merge of revisions, if the diff is empty, then delete the revision altogether. This would solve the issue of cancelling leaving revisions behind: you make some changes, you undo them (using the WYSIWYG undo feature for ex) and after you click done (or the autosave kicks in), there’s no revision left.

I proposed something similar a few months ago, see Squash auto-saved document revisions? but the feedback I received from @tmortagne is that deleting page revisions is dangerous.

Moreover, I’m not sure that clicking undo multiple times (during which other users may introduce other changes) is better than restoring the content in one click from the Recent Versions dropdown.

@vmassol

So to sum up, we could implement:

1. The Done button not adding a revision if there’s no changes done
2. The revision merge for contiguous changes done by the same user, including the revision deletion if 2 changes negate each other

This won’t solve the issues that you and @Simpel raised:

@vmassol

• It’s harder (more clicks) than before to enter summaries
• It’s harder (more clicks) than before to cancel (4 clicks vs 1 before)

I don’t think we can have the same amount of clicks with the realtime toolbar, and I don’t know how many clicks are needed to not consider this a regression.

Thanks,
Marius