[BUG] Toolbar pin/minimize/reorder actions still overwrite config.toml after #189 fix

[ankitsm08]

Summary

Hi there! First of all, thank you for developing wayscriber. It is a great tool!

I ran into a similar issue as my previous #187 but for the toolbar UI this time.

After #189 fixed the drawing-related state (color, thickness, etc.) from rewriting the config file, I assumed the toolbar state would be handled the same way. But it looks like toolbar UI interactions are still triggering a full config rewrite. Every time I click the pin button on a toolbar, or minimize it, or hide a tool, my entire ~/.config/wayscriber/config.toml gets rewritten from scratch. All my comments get stripped and some of my values get reformatted... for example, my board backgrounds went from { rgb = [...] } to plain multi-line arrays.

Steps to Reproduce

1. In your config.toml, have a board entry with inline syntax like:

   [[boards.items]]
   id = "whiteboard"
   background = { rgb = [0.992, 0.992, 0.992] }

2. Launch wayscriber and click the pin/unpin button on the top or side toolbar.

3. Check config.toml. The background line is now expanded to:

   background = [
       0.992,
       0.992,
       0.992,
   ]

   Any comments you wrote in the file are gone too.

What Triggers It

I noticed the config file gets rewritten when I do any of these:

• Pin/unpin the top or side toolbar
• Minimize or reopen a toolbar
• Switch between panes (draw/canvas/session/settings) in the side toolbar
• Collapse or expand a section in the side palette
• Hide or show individual tool buttons
• Drag tools around to reorder them
• Reset toolbar item order

These feel like runtime interactions to me... the same way changing pen color while drawing is runtime state. I might pin and unpin the toolbar several times in a session, and each time it rewrites the whole config file.

Why This Matters

1. Dotfiles management:
   My config.toml is tracked in git. Every time I use a toolbar button, it shows up as a modified file. Running git diff is noisy with formatting changes I never made.
2. Comments get nuked:
   I write notes in my config file to remind myself what certain settings do. A full rewrite from the program deletes all of them.

Additional Context

This is basically the same issue as #187 but for the toolbar UI instead of drawing actions. I noticed that wayscriber already handles session state really well through the session files in ~/.local/share/wayscriber/. The fix in #189 moved drawing state out of the config persistence path and into runtime-only state. It seems like the same approach could apply here for toolbar pin/minimize, hiding tools, reordering, collapsed sections, and active pane selection... these all feel like runtime UI state that should not be baked into the static config file.

I am not sure which other actions also trigger a full save, but I observed that changing settings like keybindings, board config, click highlight preferences, and session resume from the tray icon also seem to rewrite the file. Not sure if that is intentional or not.

Thanks for considering this! Let me know if you need any more info or testing from my end.

[devmobasa]

Thanks for reportting @ankitsm08
I don't know if you can test it on main branch, but this should be fixed soon!

[ankitsm08]

Hey @devmobasa, tested the fix on main branch locally. The formatting and comments are preserved now... that part works great.

I still notice some values change in the config file though. When I pin/unpin the toolbar, minimize it, switch the side pane, collapse a section, or hide/reorder tools, the config.toml still gets updated. Comments survive now, but the file still changes on every click.

Also noticed that after dragging a toolbar to a new position, it seems like all the toolbar settings get written at once, not just the position change. So even if you only moved the toolbar, things like pin state and hidden tools end up in the file too.

Same with boards. When I add/delete/reorder them, the save seems to include stuff like the pinned flag on each board item, which feels more like runtime state.

The section visibility toggles (show_presets, show_actions_section, etc.), layout mode, icon mode, status bar visibility, presets, and history settings all make sense to keep saving. Those are preferences I'd want to stick.

So what's still changing config that probably should not:

• Pin/unpin toolbar
• Minimize/reopen toolbar
• Which pane is open in the side toolbar
• Which sections are collapsed in the side palette
• Hiding/showing individual tool buttons
• Reordering tools
• Finishing a toolbar drag (saves everything, not just the position)
• Board pinned flag on each board item

The same approach from #189 (moving runtime-only interactions out of the persist path) would probably cover most of these.

Also, should I open a new issue for this or do you want to reopen #293?

[devmobasa]

Thanks for testing it out.
This is a big one actually. I will need to think about this one, and look into options.

As you said, making these UI choices not auto-save is easy; making them persist across restarts without living in config.toml is quite a different story, since it means designing a whole new state store with its own rules.

[devmobasa]

@ankitsm08 I do hope this is fully resolved now. If you have a chance to try it from main do let me know. Thanks.

[ankitsm08]

Hi @devmobasa ! Sorry I could not respond in time. I had been very busy for a few days.

I tried it from main branch, commit bd6f3e1 (the merge commit) as well as the latest-ish commit db46ed0 (as per the time when I tested)

I still see that values like top_offset, top_offset_y, and top_display_mode are being updated in the config.toml when I drag the toolbar around or use the toolbar hotkey to switch display modes... which should rather be updated in runtime-ui.toml file.

For my workflow, I could just not use the toolbar UI and these issues wont bother my dotfiles versioning. But I still think treating config.toml as a read-only file (in most cases) that is only updated if the user explicitly changes settings only through some "settings" UI (the official wayscriber-configurator) is the better goal.

As an example, changes made during usage (like moving the toolbar around, switching to hidden-->micro-->full display mode state) should belong to runtime changes. Whereas, changes like layout_mode are intentional enough to be kept in the config or changes that are done from the wayscriber-configurator are intentional changes to config and should change the config.toml file.

Also, I see many values being set to their default automatically (in the latest-ish commit) like:

# Here "Q" is added by me
exit = ["Escape", "Ctrl+Q", "Q"]
...
toggle_toolbar = ["F2", "F9"]
...
capture_full_screen = ["Ctrl+Shift+P"]

becomes:

exit = ["Escape", "Ctrl+Q"]
...
toggle_toolbar = ["F9"]
...
capture_full_screen = ["Ctrl+Alt+P"]

...and many(!) other shortcut keys being reset to defaults automatically in the latest commit (I am not sure if its really a bug or just because you are working on changes that I tested midway, but thought I should inform you since I noticed them).

The toggle_toolbar reset to F9 only behavior is also happening in commit bd6f3e1 .