TextPad Fails to Restore Workspace

[lrichardlewis]

About 10% of the time, TextPad says it cannot restore a workspace. Even though I use TextPad very frequently, I absolutely connot predict when this annoying problem will happen and therefore cannot find a way to circumvent it. Does TextPad plan to fix the problem? If not could they tell users how to circumvent it?

[MudGuard]

I work with Textpad every day, making heavy use of Workspaces.
And I never have problems when opening workspaces.

Where do you keep your workspace files? On a network drive or locally?

[lrichardlewis]

I work with Textpad every day, making heavy use of Workspaces.
And I never have problems when opening workspaces.

Where do you keep your workspace files? On a network drive or locally?

Thanks for your response, MudGuard. I keep my workspaces locally on my C: drive. I use Vista Ultimate.

[lrichardlewis]

This problem persists. It stands out as just about the only complaint I have about TextPad, which I use very frequently and admire greatly.

I would really like to discover the cause. Mudguard asked where I keep my workspaces. I keep them on my main drive, a local disk; i.e., not a network drive. Almost always, all the files in a workspace reside in the same folder. The workspace itself also resides in that folder.

I have tried deleting the workspace and then "saving as" under the same .tws name. That doesn't change the failure frequency. I also tried "saving as" without prior deletion. That also does not help.

I suggest the following: Have someone find what conditions in the TextPad software trigger the failure. If I knew the conditions, perhaps I could avoid them.

[PeteTheBloke]

I gave up on workspaces. I assumed I wasn't using them correctly. The system seems to expect you to open a group of files and never open any further files or close any individual files. I have TP instructed to run in a single window and not to open further instances, so perhaps this conflicts with the assumptions about workspace.

[ben_josephs]

I currently have nearly 200 workspaces, some containing over 100 files, recording the state of work in various parts of various projects over several years. I allow multiple instances to run and I often have over half a dozen or more workspaces open at one time.

Like MudGuard, I have never experienced the problems described by lrichardlewis or PeteTheBloke.

[lrichardlewis]

The response from PeteTheBloke has the first plausible clue that I have come across. My use of workspaces resembles that of ben_josephs. I have about 100 workspaces. Most contain from 20-100 files each. I run multiple instances and typically have 2-4 open at the same time. But, I frequently open and close files inside TP. I also change and delete files outside of TP. I will monitor the failure occurrences to see whether they correlate with the type of file dynamism described in PeteTheBloke's note.

[PeteTheBloke]

What surprised me most when I experimented with workspaces, was that the tws file is not readable and editable. I'd expect it (in my naive way) to be XML.

If you open a workspace and then close any of the files (instead of closing the workspace) then your workspace file is updated. If you close all the files then your workspace ends up with nothing in it. If you close one file then close Textpad, your workspace will open without that file (the one you closed) next time you use it.

The behaviour strikes me as completely illogical and I know that I will never adjust to it, so I stopped using it.

[PeteTheBloke]

PS @Mudguard - just noticed your signature. Sorry for asking you about updates for TP. I hope I didn't make you grumpy

[ben_josephs]

A workspace holds the current state of an editing session (possibly one of many) as it evolves over time. When you reopen a workspace, your editing state is exactly as it was when you closed the workspace. If it was empty when you closed it, it will be empty when you reopen it. This makes perfect sense to me, and is exactly as I would like it.

If you want to open TextPad with a fixed list of files, give it a fixed list of files.

[lrichardlewis]

Combining the responses from PeteTheBloke and ben_josephs, I have arrived at a hypothesis. Assume a workspace has, say, 100 files. I close the workspace and exit TP. Then, I run another program that outputs to (i.e., re-creates) a file under the same file name as one of the 100 files. When I reenter TP, it will (at least occasionally) say that it cannot restore the full workspace.

[I wouldn't mind this at all, except that TP, after it issues the message) resets the size and shape of all 100 windows to the default condition.]

If the hypothesis is true, then all I would need to do is remenber to keep the workspace open in TP until after the other program runs. Does anyone have an opinion on this?

[heartfulSoul]

...whenever I reboot --
possibly wherein I have not first closed the workSpace ?

[lrichardlewis]

The hypothesis did not work; i.e., it did not prevent the failure to restore a workspace. I think the hypothesis needs more rigor. Let's add the following to it:

Any file that is changed outside of TP must be reopened in TP. Only then can TP finally be closed.

That will be quite tedious for me with some workspaces because I often run programs that change several files of these workspaces.

Of course, I don't know yet if the hypothesis is on the right track. Perhaps only Helios knows. Therefore, I hope that they can provide the guidance needed to avoid the problem.

[jaz]

<rant>
I have to agree very very very strongly. TextPad does NOT GET THIS RIGHT.

The concept of a workspace is like "I need to save the state of my current window -- I have 25 files open and I need to reboot". So I save the workspace, then close TextPad, reboot, then open TextPad, then load the workspace.... AND NOTHING.

This scenario is too familiar, and it's enough to make users look elsewhere for an editor that can CONSISTENTLY get this right. TextPad can't, or doesn't, get this right.

Why? I don't know. Please somebody tell me why, because I when I get frustrated I smash things, and I don't want to smash things. (I'm in that state right now, because it just happen to me AGAIN!)

So, how does one close a window? Do they click File | Exit? Or do they click on the little x-box in the upper right? Well, these do different things, and since M$ implemented the stupid Ribbon bar, some software developers are also adopting this idiotic concept of getting rid of the well-established menu. (this is as if we all drooling over new operating system graphic and cool themes -- we're not, we're trying to get work done so we can finish up and then go out and ride our bicycles to the beach).

If I save a workspace then I want the workspace _AS_I_SAVED_IT_. I don't want TextPad to "update" it if I close a file. I want to CONTROL the workspace STATE.

In FireFox, if I save a session, then close half the windows, then save the session again, the previous state gets replaced. But it did so because I saved it, not because the developer guessed that anytime I close or open a new file that I'd want the new state saved.

In MS Word, if I close a file that hasn't been saved then it asks "Save?", and I at least ge tthe opportunity to say No.

Where to go from here? PLEASE at the very least give us an option. And as you might guess my preference for the default is to have auto-save-workspace-state set to NO.

</rant>

EDIT: Oh, and if the workspace is going to get crushed when we kill the TextPad program, then may we at lease have a workspace backup file or history?
PS, this feature is so important to me that I'd pay for TextPad again if necessary!
PSS, I LOVE TEXTPAD!!

EDIT: I should mention that my workspaces gets cleared to zero files often, and I believe it happens when, after I've rebooted and FAILED to reattached a shared drive, I load the workspace. So the issue is that when TP can't load the files listed in the .tws file it removes them and saves the workspace.

[lrichardlewis]

The rant from jaz had some interesting comments. Like me, jaz has had workspace issues; albeit different from mine. The most important comment to me is the wish for another editor that behaves precisely as wished.

Over the past decade or so, I have tried about a dozen editors (spending several $100's). Just about all have features and limits that the others lack. I always came back to TexPad because it bested the others in more of the categories I valued most. The closest runnerup is UltraEdit. But UE (among other things) has no simple way to copy bookmarked lines to the clipboard, which I need to do frequently.

My biggest headache is TP's frequent failure to restore workspaces completely. Actually, this wouldn't bother me much if TP did not revert all windows to their default state when it reports its inability to restore completely. It should leave the restored windows alone.

This is so bothersome that, before I close TP, I make sure I touch each window that corresponds to a file changed outside TP. I don't know if this is foolproof, but the restore failures now happen much less often.

I downloaded TP6.1 and will install it when I finish my current project (I currently use 5.4). I hope 6.1 addressed the restore issue.