Rich workspaces: If there is no Readme.md, don’t show editor placeholder but move into "+" menu

[jancborchardt]

Currently, every folder has the empty "Add notes, lists or links …" on the top. This leads to various issues such as:

• Always uses a lot of vertical space, for every single folder
• People can accidentally click into it
• People end up finding the feature annoying and disabling it completely even though they might find it useful on a folder-by-folder basis

Instead, we should only show it directly on top of the file list if a Readme.md is present. If not, we show an entry "Add description" at the bottom of the "+ New" menu. (This entry of course does not need to show if a Readme.md is present.)

Before	After (if a Readme.md is present, of course still show it directly)

cc @eneiluj @mejo- @max-nextcloud @juliushaertl

As discussed @karlitschek

[karlitschek]

very nice!!!!!

[max-nextcloud]

Maybe this issue should live in the text app?
It would solve #1171.

[ya-d]

Great proposal!! Would also fix #2234 in a much, much nicer way.

Somewhat related: If you’re putting your hands on this feature, may I also suggest renaming "rich workspaces" to something more intuitive? I could think of "Add description", "Add instructions", "Add readme" or something similar. (And maybe move it more to the top of the menu?) @jancborchardt

I don’t think anybody is doing any work in this small area. You’d much rather give a description of folder contents/structure, instructions on how to work with them, a checklist or whatever. Probably the Nextcloud itself could rather be called your (rich) workspace.

PS: In German its translated to "umfangreiche Arbeitsflächen" which really doesn’t make any sense to me. The term is probably hard to translate in general.

[jancborchardt]

@juliushaertl @max-nextcloud right, moving this to Office team project – feel free to move, but note that some part has to be done in the server.

@ya-d good point with the renaming – let’s name it to "Add description". :)

[jancborchardt]

Ah and with this change, let’s make sure to add a "Readme.md" to the root folder of https://github.com/nextcloud/example-files so the feature is still advertised.

[juliusknorr]

Makes a lot of sense. Moving to the text repo since, most of it should be doable in text.

[juliusknorr]

@jancborchardt If you can provide a example files Readme text, we can add that :)

Besides that should all be doable, but moving to 26 as we have final freeze for 25 today.

[juliusknorr]

• Text: Only show the rich workspace area if a file is present
• Text: Register new file menu entry to add the description
• Text: Once creating the new file update the area of the current folder to show the new file
• Text: Rename from ui parts from rich workspace to description
• Server: Check if we can show/hide the new file action depending on the current folder status. If not this may need some extension of the server api for the new files menu
• example-files: Add example Readme.md file

FYI @tobiasKaminsky to align this on the Android and iOS apps as well.

[jancborchardt]

@jancborchardt If you can provide a example files Readme text, we can add that :)

@juliushaertl how about this:

Welcome to Nextcloud! 📱☁💻

Here you can add a description or any other info relevant for the folder. It will show as a "Readme.md" and in the web interface also embedded nicely up at the top.

[dartcafe]

Isn't it simply just a folder description? Common users may have a problem in understanding, what a "rich workplace" may be. It needs to be explained. Simply naming it to "Folder Description" seems to be more understandable and needs no further explanation.

[lukas-schaetzle]

This issue still exists for me with Nextcloud 26.0.3 and NC Text 3.7.2 (even though now, it only shows whitespace instead of the hint "add notes..."). Tested with latest versions of Firefox and Chrome. A quick glance in the dom revealed that the whitespace container is indeed rich text workspace. Please reopen this issue.