No alternative to autosave

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Tester
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No alternative to autosave

Post by Tester »

I just wanted to mention that I am not happy with the mandatory autosave as it is established in EPIM (as unfortunately in various similar apps too).

It's a way of restricting the user's autonomy how to handle his work. Autosave is surely uselful for those who like it but there should always be an option to disable it. And such an option does not exist, at least not for the module "Notes" (which is the most important for my needs).

I would like to refer to two older threads (from 2017 and 2014):

A)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19783

Here jsc wrote:
jsc wrote: Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:36 pm [...] I have Autosave turned off, but if I add a task but don't save, and then exit the program, EPIM does not ask me about saving the database. But when I start EPIM up the next time, it saved the task anyway. Just not what I expected.
He describes exactly my experience (concerning in my case notes instead of tasks).

PeCe confirmed the mandatory character of autosave:
PeCe wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:34 pm The autosave is an option that prevents data-loss because of power failure or complete crashes of the system.
EPIM is in general a big database program and databases automatic save data. They don't ask (like Word or Excel) if you want to save data. Even when you use the task-manager and forcefully close/end EPIM the data you have entered is still there.
By the way: Not all database programs save automatically (respectively they don't without the user's consent).

And he mentioned the methods which has the user to correct his last changes:
PeCe wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:34 pm If you find out that you want to revert to the previous state, then you have to restore the previous back-up. Or manually undo all changes you didn't want to make.
Quite cumbersome, unefficient and in many cases too extensive by eliminating too many changes.

B)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15198

Here ManXP described the problem precisely:
ManXP wrote: Tue Jun 24, 2014 1:31 pm Is it possible to REALLY disable autosave? If I do something, the tool automatically saves all the changes in database, so if I do something wrong (delete some text by accident, etc.) my old (correct) information is gone. If the tool instantly saves everything, what's the point of Autosave feature? It's enabled by default and can't be disabled, so why there's an option for it?
With this he referred to the misleading description in the Options:
AS.jpg
As depicted in the image above, I have unchecked both boxes: "Autosave data every ... minutes" and "Autosave when minimizing". But nevertheless my changes are always here after the next start of the program. That's confusing. And only by studying the above linked two threads I understood what happens.

jsc mentioned it also:
jsc wrote: Fri Dec 01, 2017 2:14 am [...] it's just that the check boxes are a little misleading in the "normal" sense of turning something on or off.
Max wrote:
Max wrote: Fri Jun 27, 2014 12:45 am Autosave setting affects "Notes" module.
Obviously the "Tasks" module too (as written by jsc). But in any case nothing of this can be seen in the above settings for Autosave (nor in the Help file, as far as I studied it).

So I see two problems with Autosave:
- The missing possibility to turn it off.
- The misleading presentation of "options" (that in reality at least for certain modules do not exist) within the settings.

As these issues are known already for some years by the above threads, I assume there is obviously no intention to change things. Therefore I thought that it makes no sense to write about them in the Support or the Suggestions Forum and I posted my comment here in the place for General Discussion.

Thanks for reading it.
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Re: No alternative to autosave

Post by Triple S »

Not part of the EPIM dev team at all, but as someone who has made several of their own database programs here's my 2 cents on why there's really no good way to have a true "no auto save".

EPIM is an interface for to a database server.

The database file isn't "open" per-se, it's "connected" and when you do things like create a task you are submitting those changes to the database not queuing them up to be submitted on save. You could* do that, but then you'd get really bizarre behavior such as not being able to search for tasks, notes...etc that you've queued up until saved, and with out a ton of extra work these queued up tasks would be ghostly and would likely cause people a great deal of confusion.

The only real way to do a "no auto save" like you suggest would be to copy the entire database to a tmp folder and then copy back the tmp database every time the users hit save. Which could cause quite a lot of problems on any computer using sub-optimal storage types for the database or the TMP files. EPIM databases can get quite large, I have several over 15GB and the idea of writing 15GB every time I hit save is certainly something that would need to be warned about.

The only good solution I can think of that gives you, mostly the result you want, without adding features that would require warnings plastered all over them would be a DIY (do it yourself) solution such as using a program like Sandboxie: https://github.com/sandboxie-plus/Sandboxie and run EPIM in a sandbox that way when you want to "save" you can just recover the files from the sandbox. Eg: Create your own TMP database solution from above. Which hopefully if you can figure out how to configuresandboxie you are also aware of the issues this kind of setup could cause when a database gets bigger and/or if you try and save such a database 60+X in an hour to a USB stick...

All that said, I do agree that "auto-save" probably sounds confusing to the average user.

Perhaps it would be less confusing to the average user to call it "Auto save as you type" and put it into the notes module setting tab.
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Re: No alternative to autosave

Post by Tester »

Triple S, thanks for your comment and your explanations. So if there are technical difficulties to realize such an option, of course the situation has to be accepted. I am accustomed to "MyInfo" (in its old version 6) and there autosave can be turned off. On the other hand in MyInfo version 7 this is no longer possible (perhaps for the technical reasons you describe?). A short time ago I tested a little bit "Ultra Recall" but I do not remember how it is managed there (more likely it seems to me that you can save manually). Then I have also "Rich Note" (in an older version): There the autosave feature can be definitely turned off. - So obviously some programs can offer such a possibility.

In "MyInfo" the size of my database is about 120 MB and I admit that saving has become a little bit slow (about 5 minutes I would say). But this is no big problem as I do not save after every change but only after finishing my work with the program - this may be after 30 minutes or after 2 or 3 hours. Then I click "Save", leave my computer and let MyInfo do its saving work. So the speed of saving was never an issue for me.

Concerning Sandboxie, I know it very well as I use it since many years. :D But only for browsing (Firefox runs always sandboxed on my computer). An excellent program I would not like to miss. But I fear that for using it when working with EssentialPIM, e.g. when changing something in the notes, things would become by far too complicated.
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Re: No alternative to autosave

Post by Triple S »

MyInfo doesn't have change logs that go beyond 7.0 that I can find, but my guess would be that they moved from a flat file database or some of the like to a true SQL database, 7.0 brought with it many of the hallmarks of why modern PIMs and other big data systems use SQL style databases. Eg: Speed, data security, bigger attachments and better scalability. I'm not going to install Ultra Recall to see for sure, but looking at it's feature video and online manual, I'd be rather surprised if it didn't more or less work the same way EPIM does, but it's hard to say since it's kind of vague on the actual technology it' s using. Rich note on the other hand looks like an old text only PIM those tend to work like large text document editors and not database server programs.

Your comment about sandboxie though is why it would be tricky to bring the same functionality to a database program like EPIM, it would become complicated, especially so once you got to truly large databases. Which EPIM is made to house email which can become massive quickly.

It would be a different story if EPIM was a text only and no email program then it would be unusual / rare when a database got over 200~300MB which would give a lot of wiggle room for all sorts of odd things if you could cap the database size at 200-300MB or let the program get unstable at those sizes and not have people hate you, but because of the rich nature of email and the promise of attaching massive files to notes to store them EPIM databases can and do balloon to massive sizes, and it's a big selling point to EPIM. There's a thread around here somewhere, where people talk about their databases size and it seems like a couple had over 100GB databases.
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Re: No alternative to autosave

Post by Triple S »

Just a P/s on this: Programing is magic, given enough time, energy and money I'm sure something could be figured out that would actually work without being a disaster in disguise, but there are more important things that could be done with the vast number of man hours that would go into making a faux "no save" feature. The moral of the story mostly that this isn't a feature you can just, "make happen" it would be a bit of an epic adventure that would sacrifice dozens of other features that could be worked on and brought to light in the same amount of time.

When EPIM gets revision history, which we are told is being worked on, and will likely be in the next major version, it'll largely solve the most important reason you need/want "no save" anyway, but be more useful to a larger number of people.

As with revision history if you mess up a note rather then not saving, you'd just roll it back to it's last good state in the same or hopefully a fewer number of mouse clicks than it would take you to close EPIM without saving and reopen it.
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Re: No alternative to autosave

Post by Tester »

Triple S wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:17 am It would be a different story if EPIM was a text only and no email program then it would be unusual / rare when a database got over 200~300MB [...], but because of the rich nature of email and the promise of attaching massive files to notes to store them EPIM databases can and do balloon to massive sizes, and it's a big selling point to EPIM. There's a thread around here somewhere, where people talk about their databases size and it seems like a couple had over 100GB databases.
I see. So from this point of view EPIM would be oversized for me because the only module I would use are the notes (perhaps in a far future some other too but definitely never an email program).
Triple S wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:17 am an old text only PIM those tend to work like large text document editors and not database server programs
Obviously this is what I am accustomed to and what satisfies my needs fully. :mrgreen:
Triple S wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:55 am [...], but there are more important things that could be done with the vast number of man hours that would go into making a faux "no save" feature. The moral of the story mostly that this isn't a feature you can just, "make happen" it would be a bit of an epic adventure that would sacrifice dozens of other features that could be worked on and brought to light in the same amount of time.
That's of course a strong argument. I hoped that "no save" could be something that is easy to realize.
Triple S wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:55 am When EPIM gets revision history [...] it'll largely solve the most important reason you need/want "no save" anyway, but be more useful to a larger number of people.
A revision history could surely help and be a certain relief because at the moment it may become almost impossible to reconstruct the changes (e.g. in cases that there were many of them and you don't them remember all).

Thanks again for your clarifications. For users like me the situation remains unpleasant - but I understand now the reasons for the lack of an alternative.

PS:
Anyway, the misleading check boxes, expressions etc. concerning Autosave in the Options remain and should be modified in an appropriate way. Perhaps the easiest way would be to let it all as it is and simply add an asterisk and a footnote saying something like: "Does not apply to the Note module for which Autosave is always active and you cannot change its behavior."

AS.jpg
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Re: No alternative to autosave

Post by cdc »

Tester wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:13 am I just wanted to mention that I am not happy with the mandatory autosave as it is established in EPIM (as unfortunately in various similar apps too).

It's a way of restricting the user's autonomy how to handle his work. Autosave is surely uselful for those who like it but there should always be an option to disable it. And such an option does not exist, at least not for the module "Notes" (which is the most important for my needs).

I would like to refer to two older threads (from 2017 and 2014):

A)
https://www.essentialpim.com/forum/view ... =2&t=19783

Here jsc wrote:
jsc wrote: Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:36 pm [...] I have Autosave turned off, but if I add a task but don't save, and then exit the program, EPIM does not ask me about saving the database. But when I start EPIM up the next time, it saved the task anyway. Just not what I expected.
He describes exactly my experience (concerning in my case notes instead of tasks).

PeCe confirmed the mandatory character of autosave:
PeCe wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:34 pm The autosave is an option that prevents data-loss because of power failure or complete crashes of the system.
EPIM is in general a big database program and databases automatic save data. They don't ask (like Word or Excel) if you want to save data. Even when you use the task-manager and forcefully close/end EPIM the data you have entered is still there.
By the way: Not all database programs save automatically (respectively they don't without the user's consent).

And he mentioned the methods which has the user to correct his last changes:
PeCe wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:34 pm If you find out that you want to revert to the previous state, then you have to restore the previous back-up. Or manually undo all changes you didn't want to make.
Quite cumbersome, unefficient and in many cases too extensive by eliminating too many changes.

B)
https://www.essentialpim.com/forum/view ... =2&t=15198

Here ManXP described the problem precisely:
ManXP wrote: Tue Jun 24, 2014 1:31 pm Is it possible to REALLY disable autosave? If I do something, the tool automatically saves all the changes in database, so if I do something wrong (delete some text by accident, etc.) my old (correct) information is gone. If the tool instantly saves everything, what's the point of Autosave feature? It's enabled by default and can't be disabled, so why there's an option for it?
With this he referred to the misleading description in the Options:

AS.jpg

As depicted in the image above, I have unchecked both boxes: "Autosave data every ... minutes" and "Autosave when minimizing". But nevertheless my changes are always here after the next start of the program. That's confusing. And only by studying the above linked two threads I understood what happens.

jsc mentioned it also:
jsc wrote: Fri Dec 01, 2017 2:14 am [...] it's just that the check boxes are a little misleading in the "normal" sense of turning something on or off.
Max wrote:
Max wrote: Fri Jun 27, 2014 12:45 am Autosave setting affects "Notes" module.
Obviously the "Tasks" module too (as written by jsc). But in any case nothing of this can be seen in the above settings for Autosave (nor in the Help file, as far as I studied it).

So I see two problems with Autosave:
- The missing possibility to turn it off.
- The misleading presentation of "options" (that in reality at least for certain modules do not exist) within the settings.

As these issues are known already for some years by the above threads, I assume there is obviously no intention to change things. Therefore I thought that it makes no sense to write about them in the Support or the Suggestions Forum and I posted my comment here in the place for General Discussion.

Thanks for reading it.
I can totally understand you but I think I read somewhere that they are discussing this aspect for the next update.
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