New sync system

Jay

SamMarrocco I just released an update to beta that I think should fix this. It looks like you’re using the stable version though, and I’ll release it to stable tomorrow.

This fixes the two bugs I mentioned above and I think it should fix the iPhone getting stuck on SAVING. I also saw a minor crash in the calendar sync that you hit in our error reporter and fixed that too - it’s possible that crashed during save and broke something. Let me know after you get the next update tomorrow if that fixed it? I’ll keep testing backgrounding on my phone and see if I can reproduce it getting stuck saving.

And if it’s still not working right, what iPhone are you using?

SamMarrocco

Jay
I tried the beta version on iPhone/iPad, and the SAVING/sync stops working is still happening for iOS.

SamMarrocco

Sorry, I missed this response.
To answer your questions, I’m on an iPhone 14 Pro Max on the most current iOS.

Once that “SAVING” message appears, all synching stops until a force quit, but it doesn’t stop you from changing items, which leads to the ‘synchronization race condition’ mentioned in thread previously where this happens:

you make a change to a Windows (no synch happens), you make a change to iPhone (no synch happens)
Then you make a change to the same item in iOS (no synch happens).
You realize that synching isn’t happening, you restart the iOS Legend.
Synchronization now happens, but because the last change was made on the iOS version, the sync overwrites the changes made on Windows with the changes made on iOS.

A thought….perhaps is there is a chance that synching has crashed (some type of error trap perhaps), there should be an option for the user in prefs to prevent changing anything in legend? While I appreciate the potential need for someone who doesn’t rely on synching to be able to make changes locally to a document, for those of use that live and die by synching it would be advantageous to have an option labeled:

Do not allow changes unless sync is working

Or at least, an option for a giant warning that cannot be missed by the user (SYNC NOT POSSIBLE) or a red background.

Jorge

SamMarrocco Not sure if this helps, but I had been working with my desktop app for several days (about 10 or 11) and in my other laptop I opened the browser version. That laptop had not been used in more than 3 weeks. It showed offline for a while and then it went to online status, but noticed that many changes had not applied, so I clicked into the Online status and it showed that the last sync had finished 3 weeks ago. I left it be because I knew there were a ton of changes coming through. Suddenly it changed to Saving status and remained there for about 30 minutes. I knew there were tons and tons of changes coming so I just let it be there. When I came back saving had finished and my changes had made it. I ve learned that when it says saving its because its taking too long to finish the sync and the best thing is just to leave it alone until it finishes catching up.

SamMarrocco

Jorge thanks Jorge, but unfortunately not. The changes are relatively simple, and the SAVING message never goes away no matter how long I wait. Once it appears, the app won’t sync until it is restarted. It is totally repeatable.

Jay

I noticed it’s setting the status to SAVING if it has outstanding changes even when offline. So it may actually be that the iOS app is just getting stuck offline. I will release an update to fix that message soon, which would help track down the actual issue. But my theory is that it might be an iOS specific problem. I’m working on an update to the iOS native app itself which may help, and I’ll keep testing on iOS to see if I can track it down.

SamMarrocco

Jay
It is definitely staying offline once the SAVING message appears.
It is definitely an iOS specific problem. I have not seen this on any platform other than iPAD and iPhone when trying to duplicate the issue with repeatable steps.

Jay

SamMarrocco The iOS issue may be fixed in the latest version. I updated the version of the Firebase package to the latest, and one of the recent updates sounds like it might have been the issue: https://firebase.google.com/support/release-notes/js#version_9220_-_may_12_2023

If that’s not it, I also updated the logic for the online status. It now correctly says OFFLINE when it’s offline. So if it’s still getting stuck not saving, it would be very interesting to know if it still says SAVING or if it instead says OFFLINE now. Saving would suggest a bug in the sync system while offline would suggest a bug in Firebase or the native app where it needs to force a reconnect somehow.

Jorge

Jay I updated my windows desktop to this last version and it is getting stuck upon loading now

:

The previous un updated beta versions are working ocrrectly in browsers or in phone, so it looks like someting wrong is blocking it now

I upated my phone browser version and it seems to be working.. it now shows the downloading status and then its usable, so it seems to be limited to the desktop version.

SamMarrocco

Jay Regarding the SAVING bug that breaks synching…..

I haven’t seen the “SAVING” bug for the last day since updating to the newest Beta on iOS. This is good news; I’ll keep watching this for sync failures.

Another strange bug I’ve found……Sync appears to stop or act inconsistently between instances if the iOS keyboard is visible.

Here are the steps to reproduce it:

Leave iOS/iPhone Legend up at the same time as MacOS Native Legend or Windows Native Legend.
Add three items (One, Two, Three)
On MacOS, move the cursor to the end of line ‘One’ text. Type ‘aaa’.
After the iOS syncs, both instance of Legend show ‘Oneaaa’ as they should.
On the iOS, backspace to delete the three ‘a’ characters, leaving only ‘One’. Leave the keyboard on iOS up.
The MacOS Legend deletes the three ‘a’ characters, leaving only ‘One’, BUT the cursor is left on the right of three spaces.
Type into the MacOS Legend app three ’b" characters. Now the MacOS suddenly shows the three ‘aaa’ characters as well as three ‘b’ characters, showing “Oneaaabbb”.
-The iOS is still showing only ‘One’. Part of the issue at this point seems that the iOS version does not sync while the keyboard is visible.
Remove the keyboard from the iOS screen. The item suddenly syncs, showing ’Oneaaabbb". It should be showing ‘one’ because you deleted the ‘a’ characters from the iPhone, but the iPhone didn’t properly sync because the keyboard was visible, but the ‘a’ characters were deleted from the MacOs version.

Jay

Jorge Thanks! Working on it, will release an update shortly.

Jay

Jay Jorge Fixed in the latest update. To get it to update when it’s stuck like that you should be able to open it, wait about 10 seconds, and restart it. I’ll make a note to make the update message show even when it errors loading, in case of anything broken like that.

ChrisJ

Jay I am having this issue on Windows, Android and Web. I only see ‘Loading…’ as shown in @Jorge’s screenshot. Please advise … I can’t get to any of my Docs.

Jay

SamMarrocco That’s actually not a sync bug, it’s an editing bug. The iOS app shows an editor on top of the actual item. Generally they should match but the editor does not update when remote changes come in. And as mentioned in other posts, sometimes the font size makes the editor show at the wrong position so text appears doubled. We’ll try to fix those soon! But anyway the good news is it’s not a sync bug 🙂.

SamMarrocco

Got it, thanks for the clarification.

Jay

So I think all of the sync issues are fixed now? Is it time to mark this thread solved? 🙂

SamMarrocco

While I haven’t seen the SAVING message stay up for a few days, I suggest you keep this thread open a bit longer.
Have all the fixes for this moved into the release versions yet, or are they just in Beta?

Jay

Yes, all of the sync fixes are released. Just the last set of miscellaneous fixes from yesterday haven’t been released yet.

SamMarrocco

Jay still having sync issues with iOS. After working all day in legend windows, this evening I checked my iPad and iPhone. I hadn’t used either iOS legend all day, so they were in the background. When I checked them, they both showed different items than my windows version. No SAVING message visible like it used to, but their sync must have stopped. Restarting both iOS apps made them synch with the windows version, but if I’d made any changes to either iOS version they would have been lost.

Before, at least with the SAVING message, I had an indication that synching was locked up. I’ll try to watch the ‘last sync’ time stamp to see when it is failing.

SamMarrocco

SamMarrocco After restarting iPad Legend fresh, I made changes to some items and it synched. I turned off the iPad, leaving Legend in background running.

I Waited about 30 minutes, opened the iPad and brought Legend to the foreground. Waited several seconds, opened the Documents list to check and the last sync had happened about 30 minutes earlier.

No amount of selecting documents, items, typing, etc would cause Legend iPad to sync.

The only thing that fixes it is a force quit/restart of the application.
I was able to cause this to happen several times this evening.
It seems that the sync just stops working after a successful sync, and iOS Legend is placed into the background. After 30 minutes (a guesstimate) all synching freezes, and the app just works in local mode from what I can tell.

Jay

ChrisJ Sorry for the delay! Is this still happening in the latest version? I will look at your account and see if I see any errors on it. If it’s still happening, emailing support@legendapp.com will get our attention faster than the forum.

SamMarrocco Thanks for the updates! I’m working on updating the iOS app to the latest versions of everything while at the same time trying to reproduce the bug. It’s odd that it’s not showing any message at all now… I’m looking into it!

But as for that race condition, Legend syncs by item, not by whole document. So there will only be race conditions if you edit the same item. But if you change different parts of a document on different devices, that will all merge together just fine.

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