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Losing content?

A strange experience I just had with 2.0.2 and Harlowe: I wrote a long passage last night, tested it a couple times and closed my laptop (with tab still open in a browser). I open it just now, open that passage, and all the work that I added yesterday is suddenly missing. I keep my Twine folder in my personal Dropbox - would this contribute to it somehow? How has this happened? Where is story content even saved before it's published to a file? Would really appreciate a reply to this as it was a major bummer to lose that work, and it's left me totally not trustworthy of other content randomly disappearing.

Comments

  • It's really hard to diagnose such an issue without being there. The key thing to remember that Twine is storing its content in your browser's local storage. There may be lots of reasons for why that storage may have been flushed.

    As a defesive measure, I recommend you save out to file after each writing session. That way, you don't have to worry about these issues.

    In any case, sorry to hear about the lost work. That's never easy swallow.
  • Because it is unclear exactly when the Twine application saves a story's changes to the browser's localStorage, I always close any story I am working on by using the "Small House" option in the bottom left corner to return to the Stories screen.

    This is purely anecdotal evidence but I have never lost any data.
  • The same thing happens to me in Firefox.  I will write a passage and everything will look fine.  I'll even use the play button to see the passage on the screen.  But when I switch to the house icon screen, I can see from the time stamp that it didn't save, and when I return to the story, the passage is empty.  It's really frustrating not having a "save" button that the person can push and know definitively that it has saved their work.
  • Can't believe what's happening, now: After this first issue of losing content, I started saving out a file every day with my progress. I just opened one of these to start work on once again, and that entry (which I rewrote!) is now missing again. I have no idea what's happening here but now I'm terrified to write anything more because apparently even if you save it, it's not guaranteed to be there.
  • Clear your browser's cache then restore from your backup you saved just there. It can get stuck.
  • But the larger issue is that without a save button, you're waiting for the browser to save your work vs. proactively saving.  And, for me, the time stamp often doesn't change, even when the browser isn't erasing my work.  It will tell me the last save was at 5:20 pm, let's say, even if I've worked on the project and made changes at 6 pm and 7 pm.  Sometimes when I re-open Twine later, my work is there.  Sometimes it's not. 

    I really wish there was also a way to individually export stories rather than saving all your stories each time.  Because sometimes I just want to download a single story and not have all of them clumped in a single file.
  • The Import option also works with the HTML file created via the Publish to File option, so you could use that technique to only save and restore a single story.
  • I hadn't thought about that.  Yes, I could do that. 

    Is there any way to add a manual save button to Twine 2.0 so that people can control when their browser saves?  Or is it different for each browser?  Do some work better than others?  I've only tried Firefox. 
  • Thanks for the suggestion, but I cleared my cache and it made no difference. Tried it in another browser and also no difference. The issue is with just one particular passage that seems to keep reverting at random. So frustrating.
  • If it's just one particular passage, recreate the passage, but call it a different name. Once you give it a different identifier, it'll probably get past whatever hump is there.
  • Really glad Twine 2 may be moving away from local storage, as I just lost a couple hours work in a power outage and am trying to figure out where in my browser (backed up via Apple Time Machine) the sqlite backup might have been kept.
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