Auto Save, Backup Files etc.

[Doug Park]

I am presently working on a project to combine each floor plan into a single file. This has some side effects that spread throughout the system causing me to address some other areas involving the saving of files.

Specifically, the backup files that we generate ".PB*" and the auto save files need to be modified. While I'm in the code I can make some overall design changes that could make these features much simpler and more reliable.

Backup Files: At the moment I'm thinking of placing backup files in a subfolder of the directory where the plan or layout file is located called "backups". A backup file would have the form "myfile_2004_03_30.plan". Where "myfile.plan" is the name of the file you have saved your plan file in. This has the side effect of creating a daily history of backup files.

In addition it makes maintaining a historic archive of your projects automatic. The down side is that it consumes disk space in a somewhat unbounded manner.

Auto Save Files: It has always seemed logical to me that auto save should simply do a save at the time interval that you have chosen. This simplifies things a lot in the code.

In any case I'm planning on dropping the use of the extension to distinguish between the kind of file it is. This should make managing these files easier.

Any thoughts on how these features should be implmented would be appreciated.

Thanks,