Autosave
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2009) |
Autosave is a saving function in many
freeze or user error
. Autosaving is typically done either in predetermined intervals or before, during, and after a complex editing task is begun.
Application software
It has traditionally been seen as a feature to protect documents in an application or system failure (crash), and autosave backups are often purged whenever the user finishes their work. An alternative paradigm is to have all changes saved continuously (as with pen and paper) and all versions of a document available for review. This would remove the need for saving documents entirely.[1] There are challenges to implementation at the file, application and operating system levels.[2]
For example, in
Mac OS 10.7 Lion added an autosave feature that is available to some applications, and works in conjunction with Time Machine-like functionality to periodically save all versions of a document. This eliminates the need for any manual saving, as well as providing versioning support through the same system. A version is saved every five minutes, during any extended periods of idle time, or when the user uses "Save a version," which replaces the former "Save" menu item and takes its Command-S shortcut. Saves are made on snapshots of the document data and occur in a separate thread, so the user is never paused during this process.[4]
Applications need to be updated to take advantage of this functionality, and a number of Apple's built-in programs were updated with the release. Autosave cannot be disabled in Lion.
One of the first implementation of this feature appears in the text editor Elvis.[citation needed]
Video games
Autosave is common in video games. Many video games have an autosave feature that
unwinnable
.
See also
- Persistent state
References
- ^ Engadget, entelligence,
- ^ Arrow of time (blog) Archived August 13, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Word, Excel, and PowerPoint get AutoSave for OneDrive and SharePoint files". 28 March 2017. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
- ^ "Auto Save and Versions – Every edit, every rewrite. Saved." Archived 2012-01-04 at the Wayback Machine,. Apple Inc Retrieved June 6, 2011.