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From: thewho@portia.Stanford.EDU (Derek Fong)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Autosaver (new additions)
Message-ID: <9426@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 22 Feb 90 01:22:54 GMT
References: <9362@portia.Stanford.EDU> <1206@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Sender: Derek Fong <thewho@portia.stanford.edu>
Reply-To: thewho@portia.Stanford.EDU (Derek Fong)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 64

In article <1206@ux.acs.umn.edu> clarson@ux.acs.umn.edu (Chaz Larson) writes:
>In article <9362@portia.Stanford.EDU> thewho@portia.Stanford.EDU (Derek Fong) writes:
>>Is there a  DA/Cdev or something out there which will autosave files for the
>>user.  
>
>There is a cdev called Autosave II which will do this.  It can be configured to
>ignore certain applications [so "Send XMODEM..." won't be invoked every 5 min.
>while you're in ZTerm] and the delay time can be user-specified.  However, I
>cannot find the publisher just now.  I know Egghead software carries it, and
>it is very reasonably priced.
>
>Alternatively, I have seen ads for a cdev/INIT called "Shadow" which lives 
>below the Standard File world and automagically, whenever you select "Save..."
>maintains a second file, in a ddition to the one you explicitly create and
>name.
>
><chaz>
>

Thank you to  everyone who has responded to my inquiry.  Most everyone has
recommended to me AutoSave II, including the author himself. :)  However,
it does not seem to fit the bill for what I'm looking for.  Shadow seems to.
Does anyone have any experience with it?

Again, what I am looking for is something like that seen in CMU's Pascal
Genie or Karel Genie or in fact, in UNIX itself which saves an alternate
file for you periodically.  

For example,

if I am working on a file called "paper" it would periodically save to a file
called "autosave of paper" (as with the Carnegie Mellon (CMU) programs) or
as "paper.bak" or "paper*" as in Unix (I believe Unix does it in one of those
formats although I hardly pay attention to it).

Having this type of autosave might leave you hard drive with extra files, 
until you trash them after you have completed you work.  But it provides
an actual SECOND copy and in case you have made changes which you don't like,
they won't be save on your original file's name.

Ok, so, does Shadow do this?  Am I wrong in thinking that Autosave II can't
do this?  Does the Quickeys combo init/cdev (mentioned by a few people) do 
this? Or is there something out there like that?  OR (my last one), does
anyone one of you great programmer's out there willing to work on such a Cdev/
Init/or whatever to accomplish this?

In fact, I'm curious why more programs don't implement this feature.  I like
the way CMU made this option settable in their programs.  Since it might
be a hassle for some people to have their disk riddled with Autosave files.

In any case, maybe I'm wrong and this is a hard thing to create as a program.
I know I can't personally make one myself, but I hope that some one can.  I
think such a program would be very useful.  

Final note:  I think  the price being charged for Autosave is great ($29 from
what I have heard), but it would be nice if I could find a program doing
what I really want it to do.

Thanks for all of the air time on the net.  And thanks in advance to anyone
who can help me.

---Derek Fong
fong@cive.stanford.edu
thewho@portia.stanford.edu