Dropbox integration for Twine 2.0?

Zionviller

I'm not a great programmer and don't really know what would be involved but..

What's the possibility of Dropbox integration for Twine 2.0?

I think it would be nice so that the story I'm working on with my notebook can easily be transferred and worked on my desktop.. or iPad! Also, it might make sharing Twine stories and games that much easier.

Has this been brought up before?

Claretta

Already exists. You can use the "publish to file" option to create a html file, then upload the html file and any art/sound assets in a zipped folder to Dropbox and then download it, import it into Twine 2.0 main screen using the import from file option you see there on the right, and just work on it locally.

Then when you're finished, click "publish to file" again to compile it to html, re-upload it to Dropbox, and then import it again from a different PC.

Zionviller

True, but not fully what I mean. I'm talking "integration".

For example, a tab or folder on the home screen that accesses/syncs with my Dropbox account. That would be very convenient.

Though it's a native mobile app, there's a budgeting app called "You Need A Budget" that syncs its information across computers and mobile devices using Dropbox and I thought that would be perfect for Twine 2.0.

I know it's a bit lazy but, all of these exporting, saving, transferring, and importing clicks could be automated!

nicolem

The biggest barrier to integrating Twine 2.0 with the Dropbox API is that it requires apps that talk to it to be registered with them on Dropbox's side: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore/sdks/js

There's no way to make all installs of Twine 2.0 use the same API key because it would differ by domain, local copies wouldn't work at all, and so on. You'd have to register it separately on every server it was placed on.

greyelf

Two other issues:

1. Within seconds of integrating Twine 2 with Dropbox you would either get a request or a complaint that it was not also integrated with Google Docs (or any other popular file hosting site of choice)

This possible means that the method used to integrate with Dropbox would need to be written in a way that allowed for future support of others, making the solution even more complex.

2. What is the legal position of the Twine 2 hosted application pushing files that could contain restricted content to Dropbox (or xyx), is the position the same as it would be if the Author manually copied files to the same service?

Pneuma

If you were to use a "Portable" browser, or re-configure your browser on both the desktop and notebook (or whichever other device), you can achieve a reasonable workaround.

For instance, in Chrome and with Dropbox installed:

• Copy your user profile to a folder in Dropbox
• Change Chrome's config to point to this new location for the user profile
• On subsequent systems, have Dropbox installed and configure Chrome to use the user profile in the Dropbox

You could same with Mozilla, but not IE I think because of the way the user profile is integrated into Windows.

You could check out the PortableApps based browsers too, (such as the PortableChromium which is based on Chrome.) This then can become your dedicated development environment.

There is no need in the above options for a third-party app, as Dropbox will perform the synchronization as it goes about its usual business.

Edit: The above need also not be Dropbox specific, you can do this with Skydrive or Google Docs, or any other WebDAV like platform, as long as there is a Windows Explorer (or Mac/Linux filesystem equivalent) addressable "folder", you can have a shared profile.

Edit2:  Also, don't try edit your stories across multiple machines at the same time or fail to synch when moving from one system to the other, this will not make Twine multi-user capable and you will get severe synch conflicts.