Upgrade StorageFailure to save before author status change
This is a bug report for unexpected behavior.
The general paradigm in Zotero is that there is no "Save," "Apply," or "Done" button, that you are just supposed to click for the next action and the information which has been entered in a current field will be saved. I still find this unsettling because I don't know if it will be saved or lost (many other systems and websites would just discard the changes and what was typed in), but it is a very efficient UI. However, that paradigm has a couple small unexpected holes; I am reporting one of them here.
When I am entering information for one author (e. g. their name), and I click to change the description/title of another author/editor, or move another author up or down in the list, the information entered in for the one author is discarded.
Test case:
Enter a book section with editors Jefferson, Thomas & Madison, James. Maybe this starts as a book and you convert it to a book section, a common use case. Since you can't then add an author in the first or any middle position in the list (which seems odd), you use the plus sign to add authors Washington, George and Adams, John to the end of the list. You then want to move the authors to the top of the list, so that contributors are in the right order. So you click next to "Washington" and choose either Move Up or "Author" to change his status, if not already done. Even though "Adams" was not an active field and should have been saved, and "John" was completely entered and should have been saved, that information is discarded and the desired change to Washington takes place.
Expected outcome:
The last author (Adams, John) is saved, the first name field ("John") becomes inactive, and THEN the change to Washington (move up or change to Author status from Editor) takes place.
In my testing, this generalizes to any action on any of the earlier editors (incl. delete), except activating their name field for an edit. Changing the author status/position of a new author while currently editing that author saves the changes & closes the fields before making the change, as expected.
The general paradigm in Zotero is that there is no "Save," "Apply," or "Done" button, that you are just supposed to click for the next action and the information which has been entered in a current field will be saved. I still find this unsettling because I don't know if it will be saved or lost (many other systems and websites would just discard the changes and what was typed in), but it is a very efficient UI. However, that paradigm has a couple small unexpected holes; I am reporting one of them here.
When I am entering information for one author (e. g. their name), and I click to change the description/title of another author/editor, or move another author up or down in the list, the information entered in for the one author is discarded.
Test case:
Enter a book section with editors Jefferson, Thomas & Madison, James. Maybe this starts as a book and you convert it to a book section, a common use case. Since you can't then add an author in the first or any middle position in the list (which seems odd), you use the plus sign to add authors Washington, George and Adams, John to the end of the list. You then want to move the authors to the top of the list, so that contributors are in the right order. So you click next to "Washington" and choose either Move Up or "Author" to change his status, if not already done. Even though "Adams" was not an active field and should have been saved, and "John" was completely entered and should have been saved, that information is discarded and the desired change to Washington takes place.
Expected outcome:
The last author (Adams, John) is saved, the first name field ("John") becomes inactive, and THEN the change to Washington (move up or change to Author status from Editor) takes place.
In my testing, this generalizes to any action on any of the earlier editors (incl. delete), except activating their name field for an edit. Changing the author status/position of a new author while currently editing that author saves the changes & closes the fields before making the change, as expected.
Changing the case of one field causes current changes to another open-for-editing-but-the-user's-done field to revert to the pre-change condition. For example, edit a Conference Paper's Conference Name, and then try to change the case of its Title, Proceedings Title, Short Title, etc. As long as that case change actually causes a change (e. g. not going to lower case when already there), the "conference name" edits will be lost.