Indicatior of opened files on other devices

[valcoholic]

Hi, 

I recently got more and more into the workflow of the Affinity suite and just L*O*V*E it. And I say this as someone who for 20 years worked with Adobe and still also appreciates their stuff. 

One of Affinity‘s main selling points really is having the same fully fletched Publisher-app available on the iPad pro and therefore being able to work on the most complex projects on the Mac and iPad simlultaneously and I don‘t believe Adobe-users can even imagine what this feels like. 

So my feature request might already be taken away in this thread‘s subject, but here I‘ll write it in longform:

More than once I‘ve started a project on the Mac, later opened it on the iPad and you know with a zillion things and projects going on and Affinity‘s way how to handle open documents (when you hit the back button on the iPad, the project still remains open) it at least for me easily happens that I open the same doc on two devices and later find out I created two differing versions. When this happens, this of course is superbad and the only thing it would need is like a prompt when opening a file that this is already opened elsewhere.

I can imagine this ain‘t supereasy to solve, Adobe does it with these .idlk-files which has their own pros and cons, but I can‘t imagine that within the Apple/Mac/iPad workflow at least there might be some good solutions with continuity or iCloud or anything.

Would totally appreciate it (or maybe I‘ve overseen something?) and I guess this might have happened to many people making use of the iPad‘s apps at least.

Thanks and cheers,

Valentin

[v_kyr]

18 minutes ago, valcoholic said:

More than once I‘ve started a project on the Mac, later opened it on the iPad and you know with a zillion things and projects going on and Affinity‘s way how to handle open documents (when you hit the back button on the iPad, the project still remains open) it at least for me easily happens that I open the same doc on two devices and later find out I created two differing versions. ...  the only thing it would need is like a prompt when opening a file that this is already opened elsewhere.
...
I can imagine this ain‘t supereasy to solve, Adobe does it with these .idlk-files which has their own pros and cons ...

Affinity lately in v2 introduced and uses a ~lock~ file concept, at least for the desktop apps. But I don't know if that file locking concept has portability wise also taken over up to iPad OS here, as the desktop and iPad apps aren't feature wise 100% modeled 1:1 and due to Apple sandboxing.

Also Apple's desktop filesystem and iPad OS filesystem capabilities do differ immense. Further I doubt that such file locking mechanisms do always flawlessly work across cloud services etc. as there can happen interconnection wise too many things which can leave such locked files across networks in an undetermined state.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

Affinity lately in v2 introduced and uses a ~lock~ file concept, at least for the desktop apps. But I don't know if that file locking concept has portability wise also taken over up to iPad OS here, as the desktop and iPad apps aren't feature wise 100% modeled 1:1 and due to Apple sandboxing

The iPad versions of the Affinity apps do not participate in this locking mechanism, neither detecting nor creating/maintaining the lock files.

Given the design of the locking, and the application management techniques on iPadOS, I think it would be difficult for the iPad apps to properly maintain the lock files.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

The iPad versions of the Affinity apps do not participate in this locking mechanism, neither detecting nor creating/maintaining the lock files.

I've already thought all of that, as I've already seen a bunch of other even Apple own software related differences between these OS'es, like ...

• macOS locked files unlocked by iPadOs
• ... etc.

[valcoholic]

As I'm no real tech guy, I can only dream of things being solved eventually. What I thought is just any indication that there might be something open. I mean on the iPad I'm always connected via iCloud, on the Mac as well, so shouldn't it be possbile to exchange some token between apps and icloud just like iMessage would update a status?

Just some warning message that says "caution, a file with the same ID is opened on another system". Doesn't necessary have to lock stuff, just a red light if you will, that alerts you or something.

The thing is, that I believe way more people might be affected by iPad/macOS than Mac/Mac or Mac/Win or Win/Win. But maybe I'm wrong there. Ijust feel that chances someone gets Publisher with the package for both iPad and Mac is (sadly) still higher than more people working on Afinity files (at least I'm the only one I know). And more than once I just noticed how you often don't close Affinity documents on the iPad as to me it's a lesser clear indication that the file is still opened, when you get back to that overview grid. Maybe that's because for instance on an Adobe app you also have the same overview grid for closed files, in Procreate also and I guess in many other apps as well. Just Affinity leaves them open. I mean I've trained myself to actively close Affinity-documents more, but as soon as I need to do that, I can figure out myself that enough people out there might make the same mistakes.

[Andreas Scherer]

It might also be useful that apps check for external changes and either pop up an indication ad hoc or warn when trying to save the file and suggest to save over or separate.