Possible feature: disable editors while a change is in progress

[garrettjstevens]

This is a possible alternative to #734. The idea is to have a state entry on the session that shows whether a change is currently in progress. UI components could then use this state to e.g. disable editing fields while a change is in progress.

This is in response to reports that sometimes editors make several changes in rapid succession and some of them get rejected due to conflicts on the backend. This would not have the explicit confirmation of #734, which could be more a more smooth experience, but still allows users to know their change has finished successfully on the backend.

[shashankbrgowda]

@garrettjstevens Updated 734_confirm_change_dialog branch which disables editors while change is in progress as described in this ticket. Also added a bug fix in translation trim.

Screen.Recording.2025-11-13.at.11.48.00.mov

[cmdcolin]

I think if you want to dig into true collaborative editing, you may want to research things like crdt

https://github.com/yjs/yjs

interesting example with 'mobx-keystone' https://mobx-keystone.js.org/examples/yjs-binding/

[cmdcolin]

(didn't mean to hit enter so quick so might be off base with that comment, but just thought it was an interesting library to share)

[garrettjstevens]

@shashankbrgowda could you apply those changes to a fresh branch off of main and open a PR for it?

@cmdcolin CRDT is interesting stuff (I wasn't familiar with yjs, but I've tried out automerge). We decided not to use a CRDT, though, because making the changes conflict-free required making more assumptions about what was the "right" thing to do when changes from users differed than we were comfortable with for this type of application.

This does relate to what I mentioned in #734 where we've been trying to make Apollo feel like an app that uses CRDTs or CRDT-like structures like Google Docs, but there is a tension between that and the fact that Apollo has different needs. I think the more obvious UI feedback that a change in the data is happening (which may have the potential to fail due to conflicts or validation errors) proposed in this issue helps users be more aware of what is happening without being too intrusive.