22 ms·

> Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files OT, but just this week my wife did something that really got me thinking about how far computers haven'

by gavinpc 13y ago

> Sometimes I get so confused that I erase entire files OT, but just this week my wife did something that really got me thinking about how far computers haven't come in terms of usability. I heard her say "O crap" from behind her macbook, and out of habit I came to assist. For some reason unknown to both of us, she had pasted the text of an email into a document called "thesis.docx", and then saved it. The text was completely unrelated to "thesis.docx", which of course was not backed up. Now, I love my wife deeply. And she is no fool. On the contrary, she is a graduate student. Moreover, I completely understand how something like this can happen. We have two small children, and it was the end of the day. It is just too much to expect of the human mind that one should not say something one doesn't mean. I felt guilty on behalf of my profession that this was the best we had to offer. Microsoft word on a macbook, and your penultimate version of a file is not backed up. It truly is intolerable. So, while I have had some of my greatest highs using emacs macros, I somehow feel that the brilliant tooling made by developers for developers never quite percolates into userland.

nhangen 13y ago
Cmd z?
- greyskull 13y ago
  She probably had closed the file before the "o crap". Undo does no good there.
  - unfunco 13y ago
    Then this really isn't a usability issue, if you replace the entire contents of a document with the clipboard, then click or shortcut to save, then click or shortcut to quit the application, that's really a human issue. It's too many steps to be labelled as a usability problem. ⌘-Z should have been adequate.
    - sillysaurus3 13y ago
      If the computer remembered every modification of every document, then users would be protected from incidents like this.
      - lifeformed 13y ago
        Dropbox!
        Ygg2 13y ago
        Still a privacy issue.
      - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
        Yes, but in that case we would be talking about yet another privacy issue here.
        wtbob 13y ago
        That's why it should be the file system storing backups, not the document itself. One should also consider a logarithmic decrease in backups: while I'm writing, a backup of the state a few seconds ago is useful, but I don't need every second from weeks ago. Say the system keeps a backup of every few seconds for the last few minutes, every few minutes for the last few hours, every few hours for the last few days, every few days for the last few weeks, every few weeks for the last few months, every few months for the last few years--the odds are then pretty good that I'd be able to revert to a version I find useful, but not requiring an awful lot of versions. Back of the envelope: 5 versions/minute for 5 minutes = 25 versions; 4 versions/hour for 8 hours = 24 versions; 3 versions/day for seven days = 21 versions; 4 versions/week for four weeks = 16 versions; 1 version/month for 4 years = 48 versions, so a grand total of 134 previous versions of a document, which really isn't that much space, particularly assuming efficient differencing algorithms.
      - asdfaoeu 13y ago
        What about when they accidently release private information because the information was at some point in the software. I'd rather a single backup system like time machine than every application reinventing the wheel with all the bugs that entails.
avoutthere 13y ago
Time Machine is perhaps the most elegant, least intrusive backup software ever. And it's free with OS X. I can't recommend it highly enough, especially for someone in your wife's position.
- jbellis 13y ago
  To belabor the obvious: Time Machine saves old versions for you even if you don't have a separate backup disk, subject to available disk space.
  - cobookman 13y ago
    I literally just discovered this when using a terminal and navigating to /Volumes and seeing the /Volumes/MobileBackup. Hopefully I never have to use it, but pretty cool none the less.
benlarcey 13y ago
As mentioned time machine is a great feature, but doesn't OS X auto save files you're working on with its versions? You might want to double check that it hasn't got past versions saved.
- prehkugler 13y ago
  The file revision history is - to the best of my knowledge - an OS X API that applications have to use (opt in). I don't think it comes "for free" with an OS upgrade, unless you mean Time Machine.
- acqq 13y ago
  How exactly can he check it? As a user of another OS, I'm asking to learn how this feature actually works.
  - eevilspock 13y ago
    It's easy. Right there in the File menu near the Save command is Revert To, which leads to a submenu with Previous Save and Browse All Versions... options. The latter uses the slick Time Machine UI (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4753 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4753). Except, per my other comment, Microsoft doesn't bother writing Mac software that works like Mac software. It's kind of like running Java desktop software (actually worse)... neither native feel nor integrated with the OS like other Mac apps.
    - acqq 13y ago
      As you say "Microsoft doesn't bother writing" and his girlfriend uses MS Word on OS X if I understood. Can she then use that feature to recover her work after she had done the "Save" from the MS Word or not?
      - lylejohnson 13y ago
        No, she's probably not going to be able to recover her lost work. What OP and others are trying to point out is that OS X has support for saving revisions to documents if application developers (like Microsoft) would just take advantage of it.
jvm 13y ago
Vim persistent undo solves this problem: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-persistence http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-persist... ...I'm sure Word will catch up eventually.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- exclipy 13y ago
  Not in this case. If you accidentally `:w! thesis.txt`, persistent undo isn't going to help you.
  - klibertp 13y ago
    Clipboard manager. Set to record X selections too. That does it for me. Every bit of text I select is copied to clipboard, just below the value currently held there. In this case I'd have the full content of the docx file as a second item in my clipboard manager list with an email as a first one. I set the size of the clipboard items list to 500, just in case. I couldn't live without some kind of clipboard manager. It was Ditto on Windows and klipper now on Linux. Dunno about Mac OS, but I bet there is something with similar functionality. It adds another layer of protection to Ctrl-Z everywhere and undo-tree-mode in Emacs. As a programmer I deal with text all the time and I need to be able to recover as much as possible if I make a mistake and this (clipboard manager + undo-tree + version control + normal undo) is the most robust system I could find.
    - colanderman 13y ago
      I actually have some scripts which take textual snapshots of all my open non-idle terminal windows every 10 seconds. This has saved my butt a number of times.
      - klibertp 13y ago
        For this purpose I set very large history in tmux and I almost never use terminal outside tmux anyway. The panes and windows in my tmux are very long-lived, but when I decide to close one I need to go through it's history and manually extract interesting/important bits. It's annoying and automating this would be really nice though.
fhars 13y ago
VMS file versions solved that problem in the late 70ies. We are not learning anything from out history as a profession.
- hoggle 13y ago
  I'm a loyal unix guy but as a millenial without much actual hands-on experience with VMS I always love to hear anecdotes like that :) The first time I read about it was in Clifford Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg where it seemed as if there was constant competition between UNIX/VMS folks over which was the more sophisticated/elegant operating system - mostly good hearted competition of a more civilized age of course ;) I vividly remember the one encounter I had with it's weird shell where I had to re-configure an application running on an Alpha machine which had a consecutive uptime of something like 12 years... One of humanity's biggest enemies to progress are "Not invented here" and the cult of youth. It's often better to start with a blank slate ("being ignorant") because amongst other things like simply having a different perspective (worth 100 IQ points ~Alan Key) it helps with actually starting to build something. Eventually though we should still be aware of what we as a collective have learned already. To be fair I think Github folks should know their history so this project might be one of the exceptions - looking forward to it! <3
  - dfc 13y ago
    How do you differentiate "the cult of youth" from "it is better to start from a blank slate"? Side note: Neither of the two issues you mentioned are "one of humanity's biggest enemies to progress."
    - hoggle 13y ago
      I guess it boils down to respect - for both sides, young and old. Thanks for the compiler error ;)
  - rytis 13y ago
    being ignorant "Ignorance is Strength" (1984)
- 13y ago
sergeykish 13y ago
It's not her fault. One should be able to undo file system changes. Bell Labs solved this long ago by storing every file version forever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_(file_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_(file_system) Storage is cheap
- userulluipeste 13y ago
  No, storage is not cheap! It may be if you're only counting files like "thesis.docx" that involves directly the user, but in reality we have a lot of programs that do automatic file operations and that would be nothing but storage trashing not to count the performance handicap.
  - sergeykish 13y ago
    Sure I'm talking about user generated data. Other bits are just cache or temp, easy to recreate.
m_eiman 13y ago
Doesn't Word store old data in the .docx, for things like revision diffs and to make saving quicker? Unless the filesize is really small, there might be a way to extract the previous data... Maybe that was only in the old .doc format, though.
userulluipeste 13y ago
"Microsoft word on a macbook, and your penultimate version of a file is not backed up." Your comments makes me think that neither you nor your wife knew about tracking changes in office documents: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-while-you-edit-HA001218690.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-wh... But then considering that the unfortunate loss of data happened after an already lengthy sequence of manual actions, I wouldn't be surprised if the "o crap" would come after a longer sequence that involves disabling whatever should have been prevented the unpleasant events. I'm sorry for the loss, but I don't find my profession responsible more than I would find a car designer/engineer responsible for a car accident caused by driver's deficient attention.
- tim333 13y ago
  Although really software should be idiot friendly and default to not letting you delete stuff by accident. As an aside I've managed to delete my code more than once in a similar manner in PyScripter which makes me feel rather silly but is quite easily done.
hrktb 13y ago
Sometimes I am boiling a stew, and while I am preparing another dish on the side, for some unknown reason I put the raw eggs on the stew instead of the fry pan. Pans have been there for centuries, and there is nothing preventing me from throwing stuff in the wrong place, nor undo the eggs in the stew. It's so intolerable, and I feel so ashamed and guilty on behalf of all the pan makers. Not. We are in a field where we can prevent a lot more stuff to happen than in the real world (and the real world is soooo broken...). We should try our best to make the state of usability and fool-proofness advance as much as we can, and surely there must already be something that would help your wife's case. But we should also be more realistic when voicing expectations.
- doorhammer 13y ago
  I don't think he's voicing an expectation so much as lamenting a pervasive and realistically solvable, or at the very least approachable problem.
  - hrktb 13y ago
    His problem (or his wife's) is solvable, even right now. She could use time machine, dropbox works as well, using a versionning system would also work, she could switch to an editor that supports infinte undos, dozens of other solutions exist. But all these require preparation, settings and some care. It could get better, even 'magical', but it would be an achievement that should not be taken for granted. Btw we could make a pan for stew that checks if you are adding eggs to it, but no one would want the tradeoffs IMO.
- mturmon 13y ago
  No, no, no. This is why reasoning by analogy can lead you astray. We have enough control over the world of software that the problem described above should not exist. This control does not exist in the real world, but it does in software.
  - baddox 13y ago
    Do we have enough control over software to make it impossible for someone to delete something and make it unrecoverable when they will later realize they should not have done so?
IE5point5 13y ago
> not backed up. > And she is no fool She sure sounds like one
userbinator 13y ago
> It is just too much to expect of the human mind that one should not say something one doesn't mean. Careful, that is quite a slippery slope...
ams6110 13y ago
Even worse, Mac apps are trending towars the "save as you go" model of Google Docs, which has the one advantage of you don't lose your work if an app crashes but if you started editing the wrong document, or make some changes and then change your mind and want to revert back to the last saved version you are tearing your hair out. The latter happens to me much more often.
- alwillis 13y ago
  My 6-year old version of Word 2008 has an option to always make a backup of the previous version when saving, which (unfortunately in this case) is off by default.
- andrewingram 13y ago
  Assuming the app has implemented the new saving model correctly, it will also keep a history of every version: File > Revert To > Browse all versions
  - comex 13y ago
    Indeed - the OS X model fixes (to some extent) the problem in question, not exacerbates it.
    - tammer 13y ago
      As evident from the comments above, one of OS X's biggest weak points is feature discoverability. I love how OS X stays out of your way, but most regular users never get to take advantage of greater complexity. You have to be in the mindset of one of 'us' (reading every update to Apple's PR) to get a handle on everything OS X can do.
      - hobbes300 13y ago
        Hardly, it was well advertised when Lion came out.
        13y ago
wehadfun 13y ago
I wrote software to handle this a long time ago never got off the ground www.foldertrack.com
jsilence 13y ago
> "thesis.docx", which of course was not backed up. Something I find hard to belive from a woman whose husband is reading hacker news. 'thesis' and 'not backed up' are forbidden to appear in the same sentense by "the Universe(tm)". This law is enforced by _always_ deleting the contents of 'thesis'.
- cli 13y ago
  > Microsoft word on a macbook, and your penultimate version of a file is not backed up. From that sentence, I interpreted it as the latest version of the thesis was not backed up, and that she may have lost several days' work.
theonewolf 13y ago
You'd need something like ElephantFS whose presmise was precisely this. Modern file systems still don't protect user's data the way they should. http://shiftleft.com/mirrors/www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alistair_Veitch/papers/elephant-hotos/ http://shiftleft.com/mirrors/www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alistai... Why even give users control of the data? No, that should rest squarely with the file system and ait should never delete things unless it is running out of space.
gameshot911 13y ago
What did you do? Was her whole thesis gone??
tracker1 13y ago
Not sure if this will help regarding change tracking in MS Word... http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-while-you-edit-HA001218690.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-wh...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
beernutz 13y ago
I would like to recommend http://crashplan.com http://crashplan.com. It is set and forget online backup that keeps versions! Inexpensive and truly unlimited storage. Windows, OSX, and Linux too!
- goldenkey 13y ago
  It's a daily backup, so no it doesn't keep versions. Nice try crashplan employee...
  - bahman2000 13y ago
    I believe the default crashplan setting is 15-minutely. It saved me and my from the described situation many times.
johw 13y ago
I'm using dropbox for document backups. Just edit your files inside your dropbox folder and your documents will be versioned.
- shovel 13y ago
  Same here. As well as Time Machine. Just in case Dropbox ever breaks.
NIL8 13y ago
"Now, I love my wife deeply. And she is no fool. On the contrary, she is a graduate student." No offense, to you or your wife, but this statement is hilarious for several reasons!
novaleaf 13y ago
ummm.. if you didn't do it then, i suppose it's already too late, but ctrl-z (i guess that's option-z on a mac?)
vickytnz 13y ago
When I started working on my thesis, I immediately set up my entire document directory for it to be in Dropbox. At the time I paid extra for versioning but now I think it'd built into even the basic model. This also saved my friend when she was in writeup and someone stole her Macbook.
bobbydigitales 13y ago
What is this, 1999? You should have your whole family using Google Docs. It's backed up as you go, and you can view all previous versions using File->View Revision History.
hobbes300 13y ago
Why wasn't she using versions? http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14378 http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14378

by gavinpc 13y ago

nhangen 13y ago

Cmd z?

greyskull 13y ago
She probably had closed the file before the "o crap". Undo does no good there.
- unfunco 13y ago
  Then this really isn't a usability issue, if you replace the entire contents of a document with the clipboard, then click or shortcut to save, then click or shortcut to quit the application, that's really a human issue. It's too many steps to be labelled as a usability problem. ⌘-Z should have been adequate.
  - sillysaurus3 13y ago
    If the computer remembered every modification of every document, then users would be protected from incidents like this.
    - lifeformed 13y ago
      Dropbox!
      - Ygg2 13y ago
        Still a privacy issue.
    - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
      Yes, but in that case we would be talking about yet another privacy issue here.
      - wtbob 13y ago
        That's why it should be the file system storing backups, not the document itself. One should also consider a logarithmic decrease in backups: while I'm writing, a backup of the state a few seconds ago is useful, but I don't need every second from weeks ago. Say the system keeps a backup of every few seconds for the last few minutes, every few minutes for the last few hours, every few hours for the last few days, every few days for the last few weeks, every few weeks for the last few months, every few months for the last few years--the odds are then pretty good that I'd be able to revert to a version I find useful, but not requiring an awful lot of versions. Back of the envelope: 5 versions/minute for 5 minutes = 25 versions; 4 versions/hour for 8 hours = 24 versions; 3 versions/day for seven days = 21 versions; 4 versions/week for four weeks = 16 versions; 1 version/month for 4 years = 48 versions, so a grand total of 134 previous versions of a document, which really isn't that much space, particularly assuming efficient differencing algorithms.
    - asdfaoeu 13y ago
      What about when they accidently release private information because the information was at some point in the software. I'd rather a single backup system like time machine than every application reinventing the wheel with all the bugs that entails.

avoutthere 13y ago

Time Machine is perhaps the most elegant, least intrusive backup software ever. And it's free with OS X. I can't recommend it highly enough, especially for someone in your wife's position.

jbellis 13y ago
To belabor the obvious: Time Machine saves old versions for you even if you don't have a separate backup disk, subject to available disk space.
- cobookman 13y ago
  I literally just discovered this when using a terminal and navigating to /Volumes and seeing the /Volumes/MobileBackup. Hopefully I never have to use it, but pretty cool none the less.

benlarcey 13y ago

As mentioned time machine is a great feature, but doesn't OS X auto save files you're working on with its versions? You might want to double check that it hasn't got past versions saved.

prehkugler 13y ago
The file revision history is - to the best of my knowledge - an OS X API that applications have to use (opt in). I don't think it comes "for free" with an OS upgrade, unless you mean Time Machine.
acqq 13y ago
How exactly can he check it? As a user of another OS, I'm asking to learn how this feature actually works.
- eevilspock 13y ago
  It's easy. Right there in the File menu near the Save command is Revert To, which leads to a submenu with Previous Save and Browse All Versions... options. The latter uses the slick Time Machine UI (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4753 http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4753). Except, per my other comment, Microsoft doesn't bother writing Mac software that works like Mac software. It's kind of like running Java desktop software (actually worse)... neither native feel nor integrated with the OS like other Mac apps.
  - acqq 13y ago
    As you say "Microsoft doesn't bother writing" and his girlfriend uses MS Word on OS X if I understood. Can she then use that feature to recover her work after she had done the "Save" from the MS Word or not?
    - lylejohnson 13y ago
      No, she's probably not going to be able to recover her lost work. What OP and others are trying to point out is that OS X has support for saving revisions to documents if application developers (like Microsoft) would just take advantage of it.

jvm 13y ago

Vim persistent undo solves this problem: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-persistence http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/undo.html#undo-persist... ...I'm sure Word will catch up eventually.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
exclipy 13y ago
Not in this case. If you accidentally `:w! thesis.txt`, persistent undo isn't going to help you.
- klibertp 13y ago
  Clipboard manager. Set to record X selections too. That does it for me. Every bit of text I select is copied to clipboard, just below the value currently held there. In this case I'd have the full content of the docx file as a second item in my clipboard manager list with an email as a first one. I set the size of the clipboard items list to 500, just in case. I couldn't live without some kind of clipboard manager. It was Ditto on Windows and klipper now on Linux. Dunno about Mac OS, but I bet there is something with similar functionality. It adds another layer of protection to Ctrl-Z everywhere and undo-tree-mode in Emacs. As a programmer I deal with text all the time and I need to be able to recover as much as possible if I make a mistake and this (clipboard manager + undo-tree + version control + normal undo) is the most robust system I could find.
  - colanderman 13y ago
    I actually have some scripts which take textual snapshots of all my open non-idle terminal windows every 10 seconds. This has saved my butt a number of times.
    - klibertp 13y ago
      For this purpose I set very large history in tmux and I almost never use terminal outside tmux anyway. The panes and windows in my tmux are very long-lived, but when I decide to close one I need to go through it's history and manually extract interesting/important bits. It's annoying and automating this would be really nice though.

fhars 13y ago

VMS file versions solved that problem in the late 70ies. We are not learning anything from out history as a profession.

hoggle 13y ago
I'm a loyal unix guy but as a millenial without much actual hands-on experience with VMS I always love to hear anecdotes like that :) The first time I read about it was in Clifford Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg where it seemed as if there was constant competition between UNIX/VMS folks over which was the more sophisticated/elegant operating system - mostly good hearted competition of a more civilized age of course ;) I vividly remember the one encounter I had with it's weird shell where I had to re-configure an application running on an Alpha machine which had a consecutive uptime of something like 12 years... One of humanity's biggest enemies to progress are "Not invented here" and the cult of youth. It's often better to start with a blank slate ("being ignorant") because amongst other things like simply having a different perspective (worth 100 IQ points ~Alan Key) it helps with actually starting to build something. Eventually though we should still be aware of what we as a collective have learned already. To be fair I think Github folks should know their history so this project might be one of the exceptions - looking forward to it! <3
- dfc 13y ago
  How do you differentiate "the cult of youth" from "it is better to start from a blank slate"? Side note: Neither of the two issues you mentioned are "one of humanity's biggest enemies to progress."
  - hoggle 13y ago
    I guess it boils down to respect - for both sides, young and old. Thanks for the compiler error ;)
- rytis 13y ago
  being ignorant "Ignorance is Strength" (1984)
13y ago

sergeykish 13y ago

It's not her fault. One should be able to undo file system changes. Bell Labs solved this long ago by storing every file version forever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_(file_system) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_(file_system) Storage is cheap

userulluipeste 13y ago
No, storage is not cheap! It may be if you're only counting files like "thesis.docx" that involves directly the user, but in reality we have a lot of programs that do automatic file operations and that would be nothing but storage trashing not to count the performance handicap.
- sergeykish 13y ago
  Sure I'm talking about user generated data. Other bits are just cache or temp, easy to recreate.

m_eiman 13y ago

Doesn't Word store old data in the .docx, for things like revision diffs and to make saving quicker? Unless the filesize is really small, there might be a way to extract the previous data... Maybe that was only in the old .doc format, though.

userulluipeste 13y ago

"Microsoft word on a macbook, and your penultimate version of a file is not backed up." Your comments makes me think that neither you nor your wife knew about tracking changes in office documents: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-while-you-edit-HA001218690.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-wh... But then considering that the unfortunate loss of data happened after an already lengthy sequence of manual actions, I wouldn't be surprised if the "o crap" would come after a longer sequence that involves disabling whatever should have been prevented the unpleasant events. I'm sorry for the loss, but I don't find my profession responsible more than I would find a car designer/engineer responsible for a car accident caused by driver's deficient attention.

tim333 13y ago
Although really software should be idiot friendly and default to not letting you delete stuff by accident. As an aside I've managed to delete my code more than once in a similar manner in PyScripter which makes me feel rather silly but is quite easily done.

hrktb 13y ago

Sometimes I am boiling a stew, and while I am preparing another dish on the side, for some unknown reason I put the raw eggs on the stew instead of the fry pan. Pans have been there for centuries, and there is nothing preventing me from throwing stuff in the wrong place, nor undo the eggs in the stew. It's so intolerable, and I feel so ashamed and guilty on behalf of all the pan makers. Not. We are in a field where we can prevent a lot more stuff to happen than in the real world (and the real world is soooo broken...). We should try our best to make the state of usability and fool-proofness advance as much as we can, and surely there must already be something that would help your wife's case. But we should also be more realistic when voicing expectations.

doorhammer 13y ago
I don't think he's voicing an expectation so much as lamenting a pervasive and realistically solvable, or at the very least approachable problem.
- hrktb 13y ago
  His problem (or his wife's) is solvable, even right now. She could use time machine, dropbox works as well, using a versionning system would also work, she could switch to an editor that supports infinte undos, dozens of other solutions exist. But all these require preparation, settings and some care. It could get better, even 'magical', but it would be an achievement that should not be taken for granted. Btw we could make a pan for stew that checks if you are adding eggs to it, but no one would want the tradeoffs IMO.
mturmon 13y ago
No, no, no. This is why reasoning by analogy can lead you astray. We have enough control over the world of software that the problem described above should not exist. This control does not exist in the real world, but it does in software.
- baddox 13y ago
  Do we have enough control over software to make it impossible for someone to delete something and make it unrecoverable when they will later realize they should not have done so?

IE5point5 13y ago

> not backed up. > And she is no fool She sure sounds like one

userbinator 13y ago

> It is just too much to expect of the human mind that one should not say something one doesn't mean. Careful, that is quite a slippery slope...

ams6110 13y ago

Even worse, Mac apps are trending towars the "save as you go" model of Google Docs, which has the one advantage of you don't lose your work if an app crashes but if you started editing the wrong document, or make some changes and then change your mind and want to revert back to the last saved version you are tearing your hair out. The latter happens to me much more often.

alwillis 13y ago
My 6-year old version of Word 2008 has an option to always make a backup of the previous version when saving, which (unfortunately in this case) is off by default.
andrewingram 13y ago
Assuming the app has implemented the new saving model correctly, it will also keep a history of every version: File > Revert To > Browse all versions
- comex 13y ago
  Indeed - the OS X model fixes (to some extent) the problem in question, not exacerbates it.
  - tammer 13y ago
    As evident from the comments above, one of OS X's biggest weak points is feature discoverability. I love how OS X stays out of your way, but most regular users never get to take advantage of greater complexity. You have to be in the mindset of one of 'us' (reading every update to Apple's PR) to get a handle on everything OS X can do.
    - hobbes300 13y ago
      Hardly, it was well advertised when Lion came out.
      - 13y ago

wehadfun 13y ago

I wrote software to handle this a long time ago never got off the ground www.foldertrack.com

jsilence 13y ago

> "thesis.docx", which of course was not backed up. Something I find hard to belive from a woman whose husband is reading hacker news. 'thesis' and 'not backed up' are forbidden to appear in the same sentense by "the Universe(tm)". This law is enforced by _always_ deleting the contents of 'thesis'.

cli 13y ago
> Microsoft word on a macbook, and your penultimate version of a file is not backed up. From that sentence, I interpreted it as the latest version of the thesis was not backed up, and that she may have lost several days' work.

theonewolf 13y ago

You'd need something like ElephantFS whose presmise was precisely this. Modern file systems still don't protect user's data the way they should. http://shiftleft.com/mirrors/www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alistair_Veitch/papers/elephant-hotos/ http://shiftleft.com/mirrors/www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alistai... Why even give users control of the data? No, that should rest squarely with the file system and ait should never delete things unless it is running out of space.

gameshot911 13y ago

What did you do? Was her whole thesis gone??

tracker1 13y ago

Not sure if this will help regarding change tracking in MS Word... http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-while-you-edit-HA001218690.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-wh...

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beernutz 13y ago

I would like to recommend http://crashplan.com http://crashplan.com. It is set and forget online backup that keeps versions! Inexpensive and truly unlimited storage. Windows, OSX, and Linux too!

goldenkey 13y ago
It's a daily backup, so no it doesn't keep versions. Nice try crashplan employee...
- bahman2000 13y ago
  I believe the default crashplan setting is 15-minutely. It saved me and my from the described situation many times.

johw 13y ago

I'm using dropbox for document backups. Just edit your files inside your dropbox folder and your documents will be versioned.

shovel 13y ago
Same here. As well as Time Machine. Just in case Dropbox ever breaks.

NIL8 13y ago

"Now, I love my wife deeply. And she is no fool. On the contrary, she is a graduate student." No offense, to you or your wife, but this statement is hilarious for several reasons!

novaleaf 13y ago

ummm.. if you didn't do it then, i suppose it's already too late, but ctrl-z (i guess that's option-z on a mac?)

vickytnz 13y ago

When I started working on my thesis, I immediately set up my entire document directory for it to be in Dropbox. At the time I paid extra for versioning but now I think it'd built into even the basic model. This also saved my friend when she was in writeup and someone stole her Macbook.

bobbydigitales 13y ago

What is this, 1999? You should have your whole family using Google Docs. It's backed up as you go, and you can view all previous versions using File->View Revision History.

hobbes300 13y ago

Why wasn't she using versions? http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14378 http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14378