syncing with dropbox only works in one direction

[Chaz Hales]

i am having a strange problem where plaintext will not accept changes made to a file on my desktop.

i use dropbox to sync plaintext on my iphone with a folder of text files on my mac. up until recently, when i have edited a text file in textedit, the change shows up automatically in plaintext. if i make changes to the file in plaintext, the changes show up automatically on the version on my desktop. everything worked as you would expect.

but something has changed. now when i change a file in textedit on my mac, dropbox indicates that the file has been updated. i can confirm this on the dropbox website. when i launch plaintext, however, rather than pulling the new copy with the changes in, dropbox on my computer indicates that the file has been udpated again, and the old version from plaintext replaces the more recently updated version on my mac. the changes are lost. when you look at the change log for the file on the dropbox website you see a constant back and forth where i insert the change using textedit and plaintext (upon launch and even prior to opening the actual file) updates the file with the old version.

in short, any change made my plaintext is properly synced to dropbox and my computer. but any change made on my computer is overwritten by plaintext's older version whenever i launch plaintext. it is maddening and makes my setup useless since i lose any changes made on my computer. help!

i am running:

ios 5.1.1

plaintext 1.6.1

dropbox iphone app 1.5.5

dropbox for mac 1.4.17

[Grey]

The first thing to do would be to unlink PlainText from Dropbox, and then relink. That will clear out the iPhone's local copies and bring in all new, fresh ones from Dropbox's servers.

Something to check: Is your iPhone's clock ahead of your computer's? That might be confusing the Dropbox server as to which is the 'more recent' copy.

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[Chaz Hales]

i had already tried unlinking and relinking, uninstalling and reinstalling plaintext, and making sure everything was the most updated software. the clocks have the same time. 

any file that i have updated on my computer will be over written with the old version by plaintext as soon as i launch plaintext. it doesnt matter how many files i update or how long i wait before launching plaintext. 

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[Chaz Hales]

and just as a clarification, this happens even if i dont open the file i just edited. opening any file in plaintext causes it.

1. update X files on my computer

2. dropbox updates X files

3. wait however long you want

4. launch plaintext

5. open any file in plaintext (or sync a folder or all)

6. up pops growl notification on computer that X files have been updated to the latest version

7. presto! any changes made in step 1 have been lost

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[Grey]

Ouch, sorry to hear that. I just submitted PlainText 1.7 to the App Store this morning, which includes the newest version of the Dropbox SDK. I cannot reproduce your results with your steps on my end with 1.7, sorry. Does this happen in a completely new folder with fresh PlainText-created documents only? What do you use to edit on your computer? It really shouldn't make a difference in theory, but the more info the better.

[Chaz Hales]

i use textedit on my macbook. i wish i could remember when this started relative to when ive updated either plaintext or dropbox. all i know is its "recent" haha.

for good measure i did the following and got the same problem:

1. created a file called test.txt in plaintext in my top level dropbox folder (where the hello and tips & tricks files live)

2. i added the line "added in plaintext" in plaintext

3. i opened the file in textedit on my mac. everything looked good. i added the line "added in textedit"

4. dropbox id its little update.

5. i opened plaintext and opened test.txt which doesnt contain the "added in textedit" line

6. up pops growl saying 1 file has been updated.

7. i opened test.txt on my computer and the "added in textedit" line has been removed

ill update the thread after the 1.7 update hits my phone and let you know if the problem persists.

[Grey]

Ah. After going through your steps I think I found the missing step… do you ever re-sync/reload the file that's open in PlainText at any point?

Between your steps #4 and #5, if PlainText is simply left open, never closed, always on the same document… it never has a chance to sync the changes in from Dropbox. If you switch to another document, or go to the Home Screen and back, or even just sleep/wake your iPhone, then PlainText will sync again and should show the changes that were synced to the Dropbox server.

Just leaving the document open on the iPhone won't invoke a sync at any point until something else happens.

[Chaz Hales]

hey grey. bad news. i just updated plaintext to 1.7 and the problem persists. any ideas? its frustrating that this problem has cropped up and totally derailed my means of managing notes, etc...

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[Chaz Hales]

quick update. i just took my laptop out of the loop and got the same results. i installed a similar app (ill call it "app2") and did this all from my phone. 

1. open app2 and create text file

2. open plaintext and edit text file by adding a new line "from plaintext"

3. open app2 and edit text file by adding a new line "from app2"

4. open plaintext again and open text file. the line added by app2 is gone. 

5. open app2 again to confirm that the line has been removed by plaintext. 

the fact that both my laptop (in past tests) and app2 (in this test) can always see and add to any changes made by plaintext but that plaintext always overwrites the changes made by the other programs seems to suggest a bug somewhere in plaintext. 

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[Chaz Hales]

thanks for the suggestion, but it really isn't the case of a missing step. i always (usually) close my docs in plaintext before closing the app. i have certainly been doing so with all the tests i've run on this. also, I've been using plaintext on my phone for well over six months without changing my habits at all, and the problem only cropped up a few weeks ago. 

it happens when i close the app; it happens when i close the app from the app manager (after double clicking the home key); it even happens if i reboot my phone.

Any of the following actions cause the changes made by any other means to be over written by the old version stored in plaintext:

• launching plaintext and waiting (without opening any document)
• choosing sync all or sync this folder from the dropdown menu
• opening the file in question

have i convinced you that it's a bug in plaintext yet? :)

[Grey]

Will look into it, yes.

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[Chaz Hales]

thanks. it wouldnt be a big deal except plaintext is much better than all the similar products. so to have it stop working has been pretty disruptive for me.

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[Mike C]

Just wanted to stop in to say I'm having the exact same problem. I've also done all the testing that has been mentioned so far. I've even deleted PlainText, moved all files out of the PlainText folder on my desktop then deleted it then replaced them once I re-linked my dropbox account.

This is driving my absolutely crazy, even more so because there really is nothing better than PlainText for doing this kind of thing. Please fix this, for my sanity.

[Kai Mantsch]

I am having the same problem in reverse.  I created a new document in plaintext on the iphone to take notes.  As I was taking notes, the auto sync would happen at regular intervals and each time the last paragraph of my notes would suddenly vanish.

Kai

[Grey]

Could you take a Console reading for me when the sync fails like this, please? Here's how:

1. Check out these instructions: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/wiki/PlainTextDebugInstructions

2. The "Debug" menu is located in PlainText's Advanced settings section

3. Sync and send me the console results (grey at hogbaysoftware.com) for the sync period where it's failing in one direction or another.

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[toh.pam]

I've been having similar problems...tried to use the computer to delete conflicted copies that suddenly came up one day (because three different ipads use the same Dropbox for Plaintext, and they tend to be use offline during the day, and only synced later at night).  But the moment I finished deleting all the conflicted files and started syncing the ipad to reflect the changes, the conflicted files started pouring back in...@_@

[Chiem Ma]

Ditto here.  I want to add that I installed the DropBox app, and if I have PlainText closed and I update the file on my computer, then open DropBox, the file is correctly transfered to the iPad and appears in the DropBox app.  If I then close the DropBox app and open plaintext, the old file is still there, and when I switch away from it the old file is re-written to dropbox overwriting the correct file.

[Grey]

Current status: Looking at a different way to track each file's modified-by date that might fix this. Dropbox sync lets us track that sort of thing in a variety of ways, so we're going to test out something different. It might not make it into the next minor update which is almost ready to submit, but we're trying to approach this from a different angle.

On Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at 10:27 PM, Chiem Ma wrote:

Ditto here.  I want to add that I installed the DropBox app, and if I have PlainText closed and I update the file on my computer, then open DropBox, the file is correctly transfered to the iPad and appears in the DropBox app.  If I then close the DropBox app and open plaintext, the old file is still there, and when I switch away from it the old file is re-written to dropbox overwriting the correct file.

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[Chiem Ma]

Thanks.  Also, I want to say that this all used to work correctly.  You might want to simply do a code compare between what you had last year and what you have now.

[JR]

Hi

     I have the same problem so I suppose than this ticket its still open. I have published my post in this thread https://groups.google.com/d/msg/plaintext/GsnWGyM5rwI/--5KD90IBnQJ

     in summary: same problem, same testing and these are my program versions:

     - MacOS Mountain Lion updated

     - Dropbox for Mac 2.0.6

     - Iphone 4s, iOS 5.1.1

     - iOS Dropbox 2.2

     - Plaintext 1.7.5

    I hope this can help you

    Thanks

[JR]

Solved in 1.7.6 version!

    Thanks!