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A small but useful feature. Textpad should have an option in the 'backup' preferences not to save files that have never been saved before.

If I set the automatic save file feature for backups, it is annoying that a dialog pops-up asking for the filename for temporary files that I have open. These temporay files are files that I never want to save. Because I set the backup to every five minutes, the dialog pops up every five minutes.

If this is implemented it should be split into two:
- for the interval saving
- for the saving when Textpad is closed

I'd rather see an additional button in the dialogue for choosing a file name to indicate that the user doesn't not want to save this file and a checkbox to indicate not to ask again (for this file).

I have backup settings to automatically save my files every 1 minute, so I get a save as dialog every minute. Personally, I'd like to see the enhancement implemented as soon as possible. MudGuard brings up a good point, that this enhancement request really applies to the way Textpad handles unnamed documents, both at backup time and upon exiting.

Here's my proposal:

Handling of Unnamed Documents
On Exit
[ ] Prompt to save (default)
[ ] Auto-save to temporary files directory
[ ] Do nothing
On Backup
[ ] Prompt to save every time (default)
[ ] Auto-save to temporary files directory
[ ] Do nothing

You could also add a configurable folder location for the auto-save, and a configurable prefix for the temporary files. A "don't ask me again" option in the save as dialog would work too, in the short run.

Shailesh

I don't generally bother with the backup option - I find my OS crashes sufficiently infrequently that it is not worth it (XP home!)

But I would prefer TP to backup unnamed files to a user definable folder as just that (well...) - unnamed. The doc view calls them document1 document2, and having them saved (given they are just temp...) under those names would give me no concerns whatsoever.

But why not name your temp files, and delete them or overwrite them when you want to - that short of disk space? - I often find I wish I had saved something which I regarded as just temporary at the time

I just created an account on this forum so I could second (or third?) this suggestion. I really like the auto save feature (I usually do every 10 minutes). However, I don't like it for previously unsaved files, because usually I never intend to save them; they're just a scratch area. It's really annoying to have that window pop up asking me to save. Just have a simple checkbox next to the "Automatically save every n minutes": " except for previously unsaved documents" or something to that effect. Thanks.

I'm with Stack.
Surely (don't call me Shirley) the best thing to do is to back up unnamed files to a temporary directory (and to give you the option to recover them again when windows restarts).

Yet again, last night I lost a file in text pad that I'd been editing because windows crashed on me before I got round to saving it (and don't give me this "holier than though" "why didn't you give it a temporary file name" spiel because I was simply editing the file in order to mail it out and I happen to prefer using TextPad to using Outlook for editing mail documents).

I mean, for goodness sake. Even "vi" has this feature, and it's been around since the 1960s!
Huw

Hello huw

I think perhaps you misunderstood the topic. The request was to turn off auto file saving.

Re your losing files, Textpad does have the option to automatically save your files every x minutes. It seems that you did not have this enabled?
Configure/Preferences/Backups

There could be a second New function in the File menu, something like New temporary document (Ctrl+Shift+N). These documents would not be saved on 'save all changed'-like events (Save All, Close, ...) by default, but could be saved if the user wants it.

I want to have a backup of what I was editting but I don't want to overwrite the original all the time.

I often have several unnamed/unsaved scratch/temp documents opened.

If I enable the auto-save it demands a filename. It may also save documents that I had opened that are in use by others or contain binary data that is corrupted if it saves automatically.
If I don't have the auto-save I can't recover changes I made to files and temp files prior to saving when the PC is not shutdown properly. AARRGGHH!!

I would like to suggest the option for an 'auto-backup' which dosen't save over the top of the original. Option to have a single path to save backup/recovery files or to change name and save in same folder. This would also need support for unnamed files to be saved in a specified backup folder. Editing several large files may also be a problem if they would take up a lot of disk space.
This idea is based on what MS Word does so that you can hopefully recover what you were doing before the system crash.

What about saving some undo information along with a recovery file ?
Would you need to make a collection of the backups and undo info into a single proprietry data file ?

Backup save workspace ?

I'd prefer TextPad to not backup files that have been created but not yet manually saved. TextPad is smart enough to do this for files that haven't been modified, but I'd like to extend it to all files that haven't been saved manually (=named). Often I'll create a new file, write a little preamble (e.g. "#!/bin/perl"), think about what I'm going to write, then start typing. It's quite distracting for the "save file as" dialog to pop up in mid-keystroke.

Implementation of this feature would be simple. When a new file is created, a "dirty bit" is set to false; as soon as the file is saved, the dirty bit is set to true, and remains that way until the file or application is closed. Automatic backup only affects those files whose dirty bit is set.

generally, i fall with humbads 8)

I face this problem often, though for some reason I do not get the file/save/as dialog box everyone is talking about.

What I continually need is several copy-past buffers open and will often have several instances of several different editors open, working mostly in TextPad as it's faster and has fewer hangs over winnie's low-carb kernel.

copy-past should be implemented as copy/past/swap

doc_1 select, copy
alt-tab to another editor
paste....

and so on until the contents of the target document are swapped with the contents of the copy-paste buffer.

Possibly to be place in the selected portion of doc_1

banging around several thousand lines of code presents this in just about any programming linguistic.

I like the direction that nyugi suggested but I would be more specific in identifying the document as a scratchpad. In otherwords, you could open a new document as scratchpad document (scratchpad1, scratchpad2, etc.). Scratchpad documents could be of any class/type that regular documents are so syntax highlighting etc. could be applied. Regular documents and scratchpad documents would have thier own autosave configuration options. Of course scratchpad documents would require a temp folder to be identified to house them if autosave of scratchpad files were to be turned on. Also, the option of converting a file to scratchpad status would be needed, such as the open dialog allowing you to open the specific file as a scratchpad instance. (Technically the search results document would be a scratchpad document.) Also modifying the "Save As" dialog so you could convert an open instance of a file to a scratchpad (this is a way of continuing to have autosave on but not overwriting an original file until you are happy with the results...we've all done that before, and yes, I know that is what source code control is for).

I'm also from the "better safe than sorry" school whereby I'd still prompt for the saving of scratchpad documents on a general TP close no matter what. All you have to do is click no (or "no to all" for scratchpad documents). Makes you think one more time before loosing that bit brilliant code you just created

I just lost two days worth of work because Autosave is disabled by default, which I would consider about the dumbest UI choice I have ever seen. After I turned it on, I discovered that that can be beat. It turns out that Autosave applies to temp files as well, which means that an annoying dialog pops up on every autosave interval. Seriously? You couldn't brainstorm a better way to handle that edge case?? An ignore bit set by the save dialog? A preferences option for autosave of "Named files only"? You couldn't even create an "Is the save dialog already open?" flag at the document level??? The annoying thing about this is a fix to this takes far less time than reading about the complaints in the forum would.

Other than the ability to open a file and save it in the first place, and with the possible exception of being able to toggle word wrap, is there a more important feature that even exists for text editors?

Given,
* The fix is measured in hours, not days.
* The feature is one of the most important for text editors
* It has already generated 100 times it's fix estimate time in consumer responses.

... Couldn't this be considered a priority? Why would you ever even bother to release a release that didn't have this fix in it???

Until then, does anybody know of a decent text editor? I just lost 10 times the shareware dollar amount in lost programmer time (Yes. That is more time than it would have taken me to fix autosave if I had this codebase.), so I am really regretting not just getting a professional application from the getgo. I guess the search begins tomorrow.

PS. To add insult to injury, I just discovered that Autosave is broken for some tabs. I have an editor with three tabs, two of which have been unsaved for a long time. I first thought that "Document3" was interfering, so I finally saved it in my temp dir. Nothing. Then I created two new documents and typed scratch in both. Now I am getting pop-ups for both new documents every minute and I am still waiting for two of my old ones to finally save.

sf_jeff wrote:I just lost two days worth of work because ...

How can that be? Todays work maybe. But yesterdays work should be available from your nightly system backup.
Now don't tell me you do not have a nightly system backup - that would mean you trust the harddisk ...