autosave feature

[orion]

Okay. I just lost some detailed work when I closed a document in Affinity Designer on the Ipad. Apparently, I never saved it and when I closed the document it was gone.

It is not your fault. I should have saved it. But as I worked on it for many hours over several days I just forgot because I thought I already saved the latest version. But when the doc is open in the app and you do not save it, it is not automatically saved (as far as I know).

What about an automatic saving feature?

So when you open a new document in Affinity Designer (iPad version) it will be automatically saved when this feature is enabled when e.g. the app is closed and/ or after X minutes.

Thank you.

[Lee D]

In the apps Preferences > General is an option for the Autosave interval you can lower it from its default 300 (seconds). When working on a project within the app it will be saved internally, it's only when you select to Save a copy from the Document menu or to Save from the document screen thumbnail menu that the app will actually write a file to a location you specify or the default (iCloud/iPad) as also set in the Preferences.

[orion]

Hi Lee D.

Thank you for your answer.

That is where I made a mistake. The document was only automatically saved internally. Not to a specified location. So when I closed the document it was gone because I forgot to save it to this specified location. I learned from my mistake. But perhaps a feature for the iPad app could be developed so that the document is automatically saved to a prespecified location.

Kind regards

[awakenedbyowls]

On 7/27/2020 at 9:29 AM, Lee D said:

In the apps Preferences > General is an option for the Autosave interval you can lower it from its default 300 (seconds). When working on a project within the app it will be saved internally, it's only when you select to Save a copy from the Document menu or to Save from the document screen thumbnail menu that the app will actually write a file to a location you specify or the default (iCloud/iPad) as also set in the Preferences.

Do I just set the interval and it will autosave in the background then? Or is there another setting I need to set?

Because I'm checking my Files while working and it doesn't appear to be autosaving..

...

Is this something to do with Apple's filing system? If I've set an app to autosave to a location then if I look at that location it should show the latest save time on that file. I've noticed when I copy things to the cloud it shows the save time as the time I saved in my iPad. How can I tell what a real save time is - surely if I copy a file to another location it should show that file location as being saved at the time I copy it?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, awakenedbyowls said:

Because I'm checking my Files while working and it doesn't appear to be autosaving..

You won't see anything. The Autosave process maintains a separate, hidden copy of the changes you're making. If the application or system crashes then you'll be offered an opportunity to recover those changes.

 

[awakenedbyowls]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You won't see anything. The Autosave process maintains a separate, hidden copy of the changes you're making. If the application or system crashes then you'll be offered an opportunity to recover those changes.

 

I want to see the saves appearing in Files. I want to know they are there.

Why wouldn't it be set so you can see them?

I want to see that it's saving a copy for peace of mind.

[walt.farrell]

44 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

I want to see the saves appearing in Files. I want to know they are there.

Why wouldn't it be set so you can see them?

I want to see that it's saving a copy for peace of mind.

It's fine to want that, but that's not the way it works, as far as I know. As this topic is in the Feature Requests forum, the developers will see it and may act on it someday.

[awakenedbyowls]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

It's fine to want that, but that's not the way it works, as far as I know. As this topic is in the Feature Requests forum, the developers will see it and may act on it someday.

Why wouldn't they set it so we can see changes that have applied in Files? 

You know - if I'm working between iPad and Windows and I want to upload to the cloud then it's not a lot of use if the autosave isn't saving my work to a location where I can find the latest save.

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, awakenedbyowls said:

You know - if I'm working between iPad and Windows and I want to upload to the cloud then it's not a lot of use if the autosave isn't saving my work to a location where I can find the latest save.

It's not a save of the file. It is a save of the list of changes made to the file since the last time you did a Save. It (Edit: the autosave file) is worthless on its own, and serves only to allow recovery if the application or system crashes.

[awakenedbyowls]

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

It's not a save of the file. It is a save of the list of changes made to the file since the last time you did a Save. It is worthless on its own, and serves only to allow recovery if the application or system crashes.

Well how about something somewhere in a drop down mean saying something like "last backed up at x-y-z"?