Offline and sync

You need neither an account nor a connection to write in Entz. Signing in adds a server: your documents follow you to every device you sign in on, other people can open them, and everyone’s edits meet there. Each document is a Loro document, a format made so that edits from several places merge without conflicts, and the server is a SpacetimeDB database that stores each edit and passes it on to everyone with the document open.

Saved on your device

A document is saved on your device a second after you stop typing, and once more when you leave it. There is no save button.

Signed out, your documents live on this device alone (on the web, in this browser), and nothing leaves it. Another browser or another device does not see them.

Signing in

Open Settings and, under Connection, press Sign in. Entz signs you in through SpacetimeAuth: on the web the page goes to its sign-in page and comes back to where you were; on a phone a browser sheet opens and returns to Entz. You never type a password into Entz itself. Once you are in, the account row shows your name and the button becomes Sign out.

Signed in:

• Documents open online: the dot in their status bar is coloured, and your edits reach the server as you make them.
• A document you made while signed out goes up to the server the first time you open it signed in, with you as its owner. Until you open it, it stays on this device alone.
• The documents you belong to on the server join your library. One you have not opened on this device yet says On the server, not opened here yet (The library).
• Sharing, comments, presence and tabs work, since they all go through the server (Sharing and access, Comments, Presence and following, Tabs).

Entz renews your sign-in by itself. When it can no longer renew it, it signs you out.

Several devices and several tabs

Sign in with the same account on each of your devices, and the library on each holds the same documents. An edit made on one shows on the others in moments, as it does for the people you share a document with.

In one browser, several tabs can have the same document open. They share this browser’s copy of it, and an edit in one tab shows in the others at once.

When you are offline

• The connection drops while a document is open. The dot turns grey and you keep working. Your edits are kept on this device and go up when the connection comes back, where they merge with whatever others wrote meanwhile.
• Entz starts without a connection. Every document opens from the copy saved on this device. Once the connection is back, Entz stays offline until you reload the page, or restart the app on a phone.
• You are signed out. Documents open from this device’s copy, as they do offline.

Some things wait for the connection: comments (the sheet says Comments need a connection.), the Access sheet, presence, a document’s tabs other than its first, and documents you have never opened on this device, for which Entz goes back to the library with Sign in to open this document.

Edits in a document opened offline

A document that opens from this device’s copy (offline, or signed out) saves your edits to that copy alone. If the document has synced before, the next time it opens online it shows the server’s version, and the edits made in the offline copy are replaced. To carry them over, copy them out first (Copy as Markdown in the document’s header copies the whole document), then open it online and paste them back.

Signing out

Under Connection in Settings, press Sign out. Your documents stay on this device and open from its copy. Documents you have never opened here stay in the library and open once you sign back in.

Signing out removes nothing from the device. On a computer you share, delete the documents you do not want left there after you sign out: signed out, Delete removes only this device’s copy, and the documents that are on the server come back to your library when you next sign in (Deleting a document).

Where your documents live

Where	What
This device	Your library (titles, favourites, order), each document as last saved, and your settings. For a document that syncs, also its edits and history, in the browser’s storage on the web or in the app’s own storage on a phone.
The server, once you sign in	Every document you have opened while signed in, with its images, its whole history, its comments, its tabs and its people.

The key for the built-in assistant stays on the device as well (The assistant).