Prevent losing other changes to a ticket when edit a comment

[Steve Strobel]

Several times lately I have been in the middle of writing a long comment for a ticket when I noticed a typo in an earlier comment. Thanks to the TicketChangePlugin, it is simple to fix the typo, but I then find that the long comment I was writing is gone forever (going back in the browser doesn't restore it).

I can think of three ways to solve this problem:

1. Open the ticket change editor in a new browser tab or window.
2. Notify you if you have unsaved edits and give you a chance to save them before continuing.
3. Remember your edits and restore them after editing the ticket comment.

Option 1 works fine when I remember to do it manually (by right-clicking on the "Change" button), but I often don't remember. I think that the common technique for using Javascript to open a link in a new window would work well for this.

Option 2 works well in something like ​http://www.tiddlywiki.com/; it warns you before allowing you to leave with unsaved edits. In that case, it can determine when you have edited a tiddler (you have to press an "Edit" button to start and "Done" when finished). It may be difficult to implement this option in Trac unless there is a good way to determine that you have started typing a new comment or made other unsaved changes to the ticket.

Option 3 might be the most convenient for the user, as TicketChangePlugin would continue to work as it does now (normally opening the change editor in the same tab) but would not result in lost changes.

[Steve Strobel]

It seems that DataSaverPlugin is very close to already implementing option 3. It remembers any changes that have been made and permits you to manually restore them (by clicking the "Restore Form" button it adds). If TicketChangePlugin restored them automatically, it would be even more convenient.

[Ryan J Ollos]

I think that option 2 would be the cleanest and most simple to implement, particularly since this plugin is pretty much deprecated as of Trac 0.12.

[Ryan J Ollos]

Closing as wontfix since the plugin is deprecated. I'd apply a patch if it was made available.