Text: Find another solution for editing the readme.md

[dartcafe]

The current inplementation and display of the readme.md inside a folder has some confusing side effects.

Steps to reproduce

• Don't have a Readme.md
• click inside the "free space" above the file list
• click anywhere outside the editor

What happened

Expected behaviour

• Clicking in a "free space" of the file list should not open an editor.
• No grown "white space"
• No magically appeared file in my folder.

Some users got confused and complained about of the empty space and the fact, that an unknown and unwanted file appears in their folders.

Possible solution could be, to add a button for explicit adding/editing readme.md.

[szaimen]

@dartcafe You could disable the readme.md feature completely...

[dartcafe]

Ehm. OK. Any hint how to disable that?

[szaimen]

https://github.com/nextcloud/text/issues/586#issuecomment-578387536

[dartcafe]

Thanks. This helps for my use case. But I think on the other hand, this - especially for group folders - usefull feature should get an overwork, following the principle of least surprise.

[dacoex]

I agree with @dartcafe in
https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/19938#issuecomment-599097743

1. The mistakenly creation of the Readme.md should not happen --> slows the interface down
2. for some folders, this is very helpful

Solution would be to lock the creation or to use hidden files or have a per-folder configuration (maybe too complex).

Most simple solution:

• the Readme.md should not be generated by the click
• users would have to actively go to "plus symbol" --> "New Document" --> "Create Textdocument"
• If they then name new new document or upload a new document with "Readme.md" the area above would display it.

--> As long as the area is auto-editing, this is problematic.
--> I assume this also is an accessibility issues.

==> maybe a global setting: "Do not auto-edit Workspaces description" could solve this?

[kobuki]

@dacoex I think the most elegant and easy to use solution would be adding a button like 'Edit description' or something like that, somewhere at the top. That would open the editor at the top and if the user click on a 'Save' button, it would automatically create a readme.md, remove the 'Save, Cancel' buttons and done.

[Nils160988]

Maybe, this can be done similar to deck >= 1.0, where there is this kind of toggle-button for the description of cards

[jespersh]

the Readme.md should not be generated by the click

I'd like to add that it should only be created if there's actually something to save. Empty README.md files becoming the new littering

[kobuki]

Is there any progress with this? I can still randomly create sneaky readme.md files by not paying my undivided, concentrated attention to where I click. To my dismay, the old readme.md app isn't working on NC19+ either. What a shame.

[skjnldsv]

cc @jancborchardt @juliushaertl

[juliushaertl]

Technically we won't be able to show an editing area without having the file created, since the text app requires a file id to be able to instantiate an editor. I agree with the first post that we should of course not expand the empty area if there is no text. On the matter of empty Readme.md files I have currently no good idea how that could be solved. cc @jancborchardt

[juliushaertl]

Moving to the text app repo, since that is where the rich workspaces reside :wink:

[dartcafe]

My thoughts about this:

• Do not use an editable area, this confuses many users.
• Add a CTA which says "Add folder description" and let the user edit a new readme.md
• If a readme.md exists,
  
  
  
  • show it's content in the current way (without useless whitespace)
  
  
  • and add a CTA which says "edit folder description"
  
  
• Optionally remove empty readme.md, but this could be also surpringly to users.
• Optionally let the user edit the readme in a modal.

The handling of readme.md is not very common for 'normal' users.

[lars-sh]

I just created a Pull Request, which deletes the Readme.md file if its content should be set to an empty value and recreates a file if it does not exist, yet.

Warning: This Pull Request is not proven to work. It is a first try to help out on that problem. I knowing anything specific about Nextcloud development nor the Text app.

Does #1175 help to handle this problem?