Joplin currently defaulting to the viewer with a single button to toggle between modes works for me. In my opinion, the line icons in Laurent's second screenshot have more visual alignment with other toolbar icons than the existing solid icons. Having an option for always opening notes in the editor, viewer, or last mode could save users time depending on how they prefer to interface their notes.
I wouldn't recommend dropping read-only view mode. That mode can prevent accidental note modification even for people who haven't yet done it, all without relying on Note History nor building out a new note locking mechanism to prevent it. I wouldn't recommend switching to the editor upon tapping/holding a note in the viewer either.
I wonder how probable the accidental modification is. Isn't this making a design choice that affects common case to prevent potential corner case?
When you open document in Word or Google Sheets, it's not set to "View", you can edit it. I think this is the default / something that people expect. Plus, at least on mobile, if it goes into "edit mode", keyboard pops up - hard to miss it.
Have you ever heard of butt dialing / pocket dialing? Especially for seniors, it's still a thing to be doing all kinds of activity while your phone is in your pocket. So a mobile app is not really comparable to something like word or google sheets on a computer.
My mother is 82. She does this: she tries to end phone calls by randomly tapping around the "end call" button without looking, doesn't check if the call has actually ended, puts the phone in her pocket/purse without locking it, makes phone calls without realizing it, etc.
But:
That does not mean I want the phone app to have special guards against this behavior. For example, when I open the dialer, I want to be able to simply start pressing numbers - I don't want to be forced to tap a special button just to enable it.
I'm not sure if she would be able to use Joplin anyway. It might be too complicated for her (adding notes, switching between view/edit modes, accidentally switching to markdown mode, etc.).
If protection against accidental modification a goal, then the recent change to remember the last used mode actually defeats the purpose - it now makes it easier to make those accidental edits.
Such protection should be provided by the phone (OS), not each application separately.
Google Sheets on mobile also do not have any special protection (you can edit a sheet after opening it). Same for OneNote (already mentioned), Google Keep (also note taking app).
On computer there is no problem with "pocket dialing" / accidental modifications, but switching to Edit mode is still needed in Joplin
With the upcoming change on mobile, we're giving users the choice of whether or not to start in view mode. So you wont have to do that if you don't want it
On computer there is no problem with "pocket dialing" / accidental modifications, but switching to Edit mode is still needed in Joplin
No it's not necessary to switch to edit mode in Jopin desktop every time you open a note. You can switch between a few different views, but on Joplin desktop, starting in edit mode has always been the case
I raised an issue some months ago around table formatting created in desktop rich text mode being lost when a note is opened in edit mode on android ... really annoying and not yet addressed.
So anything that allows me to have the android app default to 'read only' helps minimise the number notes that are messed up for me.
Does it still happen? I'm using tables and edit it in rich editor on Android all the time, so I guess it only affects some kinds of formatting
The particular example I remember is the desktop RTE supports setting background colour for cells in tables using html, as this is built in functionality of TinyMCE (not something which was added). The mobile RTE uses a different editor and it was decided not to support that particular feature, so it would get stripped if you use the RTE on mobile with that formatting
You have that option now in configuration > editor > Default view / edit state if you set it to 'last used', so should be all good for your use case.
Yes, issue still there (happened earlier today in fact) ... table background colour, size etc formatting established when note created in desktop gets removed when edited in android mobile app.
This wrecks my 'day note' formatting and workflow when I need to update a note in a meeting / on the road etc.
What Laurent was basically saying is he doesn't think the feature to set background colour on tables should be supported at all. Joplin is a Markdown editor at the end of the day, not a html editor, so it's not practical to try to support every possible thing you can do with html when it has to be embedded inline with Markdown. I know that's not really what you want to hear, but have you considered just not using those extra table features in your notes? To be honest I think a lot of people probably don't even know those features exist in the desktop Rich Text Editor
