feat: export and import document content #22
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Documents can now be saved and loaded if the program is started with a -file flag, at which time the user is prompted to enter the name of a file to use for saving and loading. Currently documents are only loaded on initialization, but saving happens whenever the user presses Ctrl-s. Future: - Load at any time. Loading should update the document of everyone in the session using document synchronization. - More integrated file picking. Users should be able to change the file they want to save to and load from.
Ctrl-l now loads the contents of the file as a CRDT document at any time. To make the implementation cleaner, all passing of the document between functions is removed. Every modification to the document only happens to the global document variable, so that an update to the document in one function easily propogates everywhere. Right now, one client loading a document doesn't sync up with any other client in the session, so this implementation doesn't yet work in a multi-client setting.
Whenever a client loads a document with Ctrl-l, the document state is now synced across all clients. I used the already existing document syncing channel for this but changed the name to better reflect its expanded use. Also added handling for the case where there is no file entered by the client.
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@benmuth Thank you for working on this! Looks good to me; could you please fix the linter issues? I'll be happy to do a review once the issues are fixed.
I think a dialog box would work. Not sure about how it would be implemented using
I'd personally prefer a telescope-like navigation system, which is common in a lot of editors. We could probably use pre-built file picker "components" made for termbox. If implementing that would be too hard, then, we could move back to the charm.sh ecosystem, if possible.
This might be tricky. If a client refuses to sync, then they'd be considered to be out of sync. I'll need to think about the suitable behavior for this situation - I'd love ideas from your side as well! The best we could do is to display a prompt/warning in the status bar that new changes are incoming; with some prettified red/orange-colored text. |
I think this would be my preference as well.
The only other thing I would add to that is the possibility of 'pausing' everyone's editor for a brief period while displaying the notification so that the change isn't as jarring. |
"Pausing" seems like a challenge here; what happens to local edits, or the editor state in this case? |
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@benmuth Looks good to me! Would love if you could write some unit tests for the CRDT.
I was thinking that everyone's editor would stop accepting local termbox events for a brief period while a notification is displayed, like "burntcarrot is loading a new file, please wait". Remote edits could still propagate until everyone is in sync. I'm trying to avoid a scenario where multiple people are actively typing at the same instance when someone loads a new file, in which case there will be some unintended edits that have to be undone. A pause of a second or two would make sure everyone stops typing and help everyone adjust to the new document, ensuring they're making the edits they intend to. |
That seems like a nice way to handle local edits. How do we "stop" accepting termbox events though? There needs to exist some sort of a mechanism where events being sent to the channel could be paused for some time. |
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@benmuth Tested it locally, works great! Had to fix the file permission for writing to a local file, it kept on making the file write-protected, which made me unable to view the contents using |
Added the ability to save and load files. If the client is run with the '-file' flag, the user will be prompted to enter the name of a file to save to and load from. Pressing Ctrl-s in the editor will overwrite the contents of the file with the contents of the CRDT document. Pressing Ctrl-l will update the editor with the contents of the file, and sync every other client's editor as well.
Some possible improvements for this feature: