Automatic Saving

[W Pennington]

OpenOffice has a feature which allows the user to decide whether to
autosave, and to choose the number of minutes to autosave.  This feature
allows users to choose whether to discard changes in a document or to
automatically save documents.  

Occassionally, while using GnuCash, I will move to another project, and
then from a different window logout of KDE, which causes me to lose all
of my additions to GnuCash.  With an optional autosave feature similar
to OpenOffice, the user would have the option on whether or not to
automatically save GnuCash changes.  

Walt





On Fri, 2003-01-03 at 10:50, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 09:51:37AM -0800, W Pennington was heard to remark:
> > GnuCash 1.6.6
> > 
> > Is there a feature for saving changes every ___ minutes?
> 
> Not currently.
> 
> > If not, is there an appropriate forum for feature requests?
> 
> gnucash-devel mailing list is better.
> 
> ---------
> I suppose the time has come for something like this.  I just implemented
> something like this for GnoTime (gttr.sourceforge.net)
> 
> It saves once a minute for the first 4 minutes, then once every 4
> minutes for the first 16 minutes, then once every 16 minutes for 
> the first 64 minutes, etc., forever.  There is nothing to adjust,
> there is nothing to configure, and the old copies are pruned
> automatically.  Because of the logarithmic distribution, it means that
> even if you run for years, you won't have more than 20 or so backup
> copies (viz. every 4 months for the first 16 months, etc).
> 
> The algorithm seems safe: the code never actually deletes files,
> it only renames them: The pruning works by copying a newer file on top
> of an older file.  Thus, even if the app goes totally wacko, it can't
> wack much: there's no chance of an 'rm *' happening by accident.
> 
> I think something like this would defacto server the (vast?) majority
> of GnuCash users.   What I don't know is if there is anybody who thinks
> the current scheme is better?
> 
> BTW the current scheme was designed so that it did the following:
> a) Avoid accidental 'rm -r' by never actually rm'ing
> b) backup filename has datestamp, pid and ipaddr in it, to avoid 
>    accidental over-write by same user, by other users logged onto
>    same machine, or same/other users working over NFS.
> 
>    (By contrast, the new proposed scheme intentionally over-writes
>    as a means of pruning back old copies.)
> c) Saves are done by user, so that if user really screws something up
>    (e.g. deleting an account tree) they can get out of it by not saving.
> 
> 
> So -- should the old scheme be replaced by the new scheme?
> 
> --linas
>