Markdown in NextCloud

The markdown editor in the NextCloud web interface very often fails to save, and sits continually on ‘Saving’. This has been occurring for weeks and it has become totally unreliable as a way of editing documents… Please @chris can this be fixed?

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Hi @mikemh this was raised on a Webarchitects support ticket a while ago and I upgraded Nextcloud and the Text app at the time and also changed the way cron was configured, I’ve updated it again and can look at this some more next week if it is still an issue, I’m currently at this event so I’m afraid I don’t have time for an in-depth look at it right now.

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Great `chris thank you. An hour ago some glitches did still seem to be occurring. Some in-depth next week would be very reassuring. Have a good day.

hi @chris just to let you know that the NextCloud text documents, i.e. the markdown texts, aren’t still saving adequately. Would be good if you could check on that. Thanks.

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I’ll try and get to the bottom of this problem this week.

The sign that the trouble is occurring seems to be a notification, very fleeting, that ‘The changes could not be sent’. Meanwhile, the page continues to promise ‘Saving’. But doesn’t.

On the settings overview page there was this message:

The OPcache interned strings buffer is nearly full. To assure that repeating strings can be effectively cached, it is recommended to apply opcache.interned_strings_buffer to your PHP configuration with a value higher than 8.

So I have upped that to 64 and we now have “All checks passed.”

I agree that there is a problem with the markdown editor I also get the:

Changes could not be sent yet

And:

Saving …

However it does appear to eventually display “Saved”.

There are no errors in the Apache or PHP-FPM or Nextcloud logs recorded when editing documents, so no clues regarding what is happening there…

I was assuming that this was the Notes app so I have been looking at the issues reported by others, however it isn’t installed, so I think this is the Plain text editor:

php occ app:list | grep -i text 
  - text: 3.4.1

However the installed version doesn’t correspond with the released versions.

There is also a Markdown Editor installed:

php occ app:list | grep files_markdown
  - files_markdown: 2.3.6

And I have now installed the Notes app:

php occ app:list | grep notes         
  - notes: 4.3.1

And disabled the Text app:

php occ app:disable text
text 3.4.1 disabled

However after doing that the .md files prompt to be downloaded rather opening in a web editor, so I have enabled Text again – does anyone know how to make Notes or the Markdown Editor the default app for .md documents? It might be worth trying them to see if they are better – it is almost a year since the last release of the Text app (however perhaps we are running a version from another repo since the version we have is 3.4.1?).

I find that I need to have the same file open in my local markdown editor, via my local NextCloud folders, so that the sync eventually notices a clash between two versions simultabeously being edited, and asks whether I want to keep the local one or the server one. THEN it saves. But this isn’t tenable as a way of making NextCloud save online edits!

Trying to work out what Nextcloud app is being used and therefore where the issue list for it is…

php occ app:list | grep text
  - text: 3.4.1
grep "3.4.1" apps/text/appinfo/info.xml 
        <version>3.4.1</version>
grep -e "website" -e "bugs" -e "repository" apps/text/appinfo/info.xml 
        <website>https://github.com/nextcloud/text</website>
        <bugs>https://github.com/nextcloud/text/issues</bugs>
        <repository type="git">https://github.com/nextcloud/text.git</repository>

So it appear to be this app:

And they release versions based on Nextcloud version numbers:

And in January some work was done on the “Saving” issue:

And there is a issue here regarding the problem @mikemh reported above regarding conflicts when editing via the file system / web interface:

However I couldn’t find a issue that exactly matches the problem so I have opened one:

Please feel free to add to this!

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I know Notes from another server; in combination with the Notes app on one’s mobile it can be a useful personal Note taking app, like for your grocery list or so :wink: But, as you found out I think, it must be the Text + MarkDown editor that do the work here.

I have no clue about the version numbers, are they not on the latest version?

That is correct, it took me a while to work that out :roll_eyes: .

I have no clue about the version numbers, are they not on the latest version?

The server is running this version:

php occ app:list | grep -i text 
  - text: 3.4.1

I haven’t been able to loose data due to this issue, if you could add any further details to the issue I raise for this that would be appreciated.

This is to test that reply-by email is working…

And to note that I’m afraid that the issue I raised for this at GitHub has had no response, apart from a thumbs up from two people which indicates that we are not the only people that have found this problem.

If anyone here has a GitHub account and could add anything further to the issue that might help with it getting some attention…

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The issue at GitHub was closed today as completed.

I have just upgraded the Nextcloud instance to the latest version, could someone check if this issue is solved and perhaps follow up on the GitHub issue if the problem persists (or here if you would rather not post to GitHub)?

Lovely @chris thanks. Can’t check right now but will do. :slight_smile:

Sadly @chris the NextCloud Text/Markdown app seems once more to not be syncing reliably. I lost a work session yesterday bcos I hadn’t noticed that the page was endlessly ‘saving’ and not ‘saved’. Currently I’m editing locally.

Please would you check NextCloud for possible glitches? Thanks :slight_smile:

@mikemh the issue has been re-opened and marked as high priority, however nothing appears to have happened since that was done…

A “Save” button has been added:

I’m not sure when it’ll be in a released version of the Nextcloud Text app.

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