on Recovery

In OpenOffice, the two downright most annoying features were to me:

1. Having to put in credentials for being saved to a document.

This is gone from LibreOffice, thanks god.

2. Recovery.

The recovery feature is pretty much useless and downright annoying.

I have a system that currently crashes often, so every time I open my document, it gets recovered.

First of all the choice of needing to recover presented to the user before he/she can see the document, is just silly.

The program "vim" has the same. Out of the million times the recovery thing was presented to me, the only times when I lost data was when I recovered something that I had already written to and the recovery was actually older, from my perspective. Yes I did lose text, no matter how little it was in that instance.

There is no point to recovering if you don't know what's in it. The least you could do is to tell a person what has changed between versions, but:

I really wanted to call this stupid. It is just downright stupid.

It has existed for as long as I can remember and it is just equally as stupid still.

It is still equally as stupid. Just stupid, stupid , stupid.

Putting an extra space in there on purpose. Cause I'm stupid too. So we can both be stupid now. ;-).

There's no point to this recovery system. The last time it started to recover, it then couldn't find the recovery file (in ~/.config/....) and then said it had recovered successfully. Well, how good you are!

It is an unnecessary step and only frustrates. It does not even check whether the files have changed. Most of the times there are no changes because my system doesn't crash unless I do something to it (usually) and I have my changes saved.

Vim also tries to recover files that haven't changed (because I never even entered edit mode) and the only lesson you learn from it is to always press delete. This is not about Vim, it is about LibreOffice, but I am stupid.

If I could press delete on LibreOffice too, I would do it. Not the entire program this time, only the recovery file that makes no sense and 90% of the time I will know it makes no sense to begin with.

But you are forced to go through these unnecessary steps. And maybe you can turn it off, fine, I'm sure you can.

But it serves no purpose to anyone really. It would even be better if it just created backups in the same directory upon each save and just used that or offered that or by ill chance just inform the user of that if you have nothing better.

Even a dropdown that said "view changes" would be better. Even a dialog checking changes if it wants to recover at all, would be better. Anything you imagine would probably be better including throwing the source document away but having a backup of it that you can load.

Yes, even automatic recovery without the annoying dialog would be better.

I mean it is just an opinion here. But OpenOffice has existed since at least 2000 from my memory, and it has *always* bugged the hell out of me.

And there is still no point to that system. None at all.

One year ago Calligra had a feature (and probably still has) of presenting a same kind of recovery dialog to the user.

I couldn't tell in advance what was in the recovery and what was in the source.

I pressed open without recovering.

I realized I had lost changes.

The recovery file had already been deleted.

This is Russian Roulette, this is a Casino.

You have to make a blind guess what's gonna be what, and if you press the wrong button, you're fucked.

I mean please everyone, change this system. Whatever software you have or are working on, change this system that seems to be pervasive across open source apps.

Don't recover files that are identical. Perform a diff for fucks sake.

Do just anything that makes it better, pleeeeease. But if you tell the vim crowd, they will laugh you in your face, and maybe this happens here too, I don't know.

Also wanted to say that I think the mailing list overview page of LibreOffice is just outstanding. I absolutely love the colour (green) and the layout and visual design of the page (body) is just beyond excellent. I don't much like the monochrome looking logo (Reminds me of Breeze, and pretty much everyone hates it) and the top bar could be better too, but the entire body of the page including the footers and all is just amazingly done. The only thing that would ever need changing would be the top bar. Doesn't quite entirely agree with it. Anyway.

I guess this is a statement about the entire website and I am not writing to the design team but absolute kudos for this visual appearance and the great ease with which to find information and to subscribe.

Regards,

Bart.

Xen schreef op 05-05-2016 14:43:

<snip>

Please post the bug number for the enhancement request you have filed to
change the recovery system.

Tanstaafl schreef op 10-05-2016 21:45:

Please post the bug number for the enhancement request you have filed to
change the recovery system.

You know very well that I have not filed a bug report, or you would not have written that.

In the words of Saddam Hussein, as he was being prosecuted "Please don't make me speak in a way that none of us wants" ;-).

If no one is interested, why should I post any of that?

Besides, I would have to make an account and become an employee first. That defeats the purpose of saying this as an outsider, and makes me immediately a volunteer who can not any longer really have an independent vision.

It also means I have to dedicate time and energy to the actual development of the "feature" when I am busy doing other things, such as developing my own things.

I don't have time to spend on the development of everything I have an idea about.

I gave you my idea, if you don't appreciate it, fine.

That's all I need to do right? Give an idea, and people will pick it up if they want. I can't become an employee to your company, just like that.

Here is the video btw, and you will know why I referenced that speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEjUicecpSI

Regards.

(this is a user list as well, not a developer list. You've got to do some work, too.)

Tanstaafl schreef op 10-05-2016 21:45:

Please post the bug number for the enhancement request you have filed
to change the recovery system.

You know very well that I have not filed a bug report, or you would not
have written that.

Ok, so you're not stupid, just a lazy ranter.

In the words of Saddam Hussein, as he was being prosecuted "Please don't
make me speak in a way that none of us wants" ;-).

If no one is interested, why should I post any of that?

Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.

Besides, I would have to make an account and become an employee first.

Objection: false presumption.

That defeats the purpose of saying this as an outsider, and makes me
immediately a volunteer who can not any longer really have an
independent vision.

Objection: ridiculous assertion.

It also means I have to dedicate time and energy to the actual
development of the "feature" when I am busy doing other things, such as
developing my own things.

Objection: I hurt my ass when I laughed it off.

I don't have time to spend on the development of everything I have an
idea about.

Objection: false claim. You do have time, you just choose to spend it
engaging in impotent ranting rather than constructive criticism.

Nite nite.