Ideal auto-save behavior

kevinv - 03:00pm Jun 1, 2004 PST

[Better late than never on breaking this into its own thread. -Adam]

--On Tuesday, May 25, 2004 7:10 AM -0700 David Ross <drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:

>>>**Auto-Save** -- >> >> IMO, this should be a system-level service, not something every >> application should reinvent. It's ridiculous that there's still such a >> thing as losing unsaved data. > > How do you do this? If you use the hypercard/filemaker model, then > backing out changes becomes difficult. If I do something in word that's > just fubar'd, I can quit without saving, and bang! Bad changes begone. > If it's autosaved, I can't do that. > > Do you save multiple versions of the file? If so, when? Where? What do > you do on application quit? > > There's no "one size fits all here".

I work with CAD users and I just can't see what makes sense for CAD to make sense for Word or Photoshop. This has to be application specific.

BUT BUT BUT what I would love is that the system support generational saves such that you have the last x number of saves to which you can refer. Architects are continually using the restore function of the daily backup to get that file as it was a day or two ago.

Heh, as I've been reading these I've been thinking about how many of them have been available in the CADD package I've been supporting for quite some time now (Windows only MicroStation from Bentley Systems). We've always had auto-save (and have always had the same problem of needing to restore past versions from backup) but they've recently added a feature that allows the user to take snapshots of the file at certain stages. The current state is then saved to the file.

Users can select the file at different states and compare them, showing additions/changes/moves/deletions between the states. Much like Photoshop's history brush allows, users can recover just parts of the different states also (a restore from backup returns everything the way it was).

To save disk space, only changes since the previous snapshot are actually stored. Past snapshots can also be merged out so that the file size can be controlled.

I prefer this to Word's track every little change mode. I don't really want to know every character removal and re-add, but it is useful to save the state of the document at the end of the day, or at submittal time, so I can roll back through several days of work.

CADD software also has tools for working with large volumes of data, such as the ability to reference read-only versions of other files. So if you break your book up into chapters, you can still reference the other chapters into the working file so they are available for searching/reviewing. You can print from the main file and have all the other files print in their appropriate places.

Word has a master document concept but I've had problems with getting it to work reliably, especially with something like a Environmental Impact Studies that are large, and involve lots of graphical data (and even CADD data). We used Quark for these and are switching to inDesign.

Kevin