This is about the most recent version of LibreOffice on Windows 10. I can’t speak for other versions.

My daughter worked hard on her social studies essay. I type things in for her because she’s a really bad typist, but she tells me what to write… but I didn’t remember to manually save her social studies essay yesterday, and for some reason the ThinkPad rebooted, LibreOffice crashed and we lost the whole thing… because autosave was not automatically on when I installed it.

No, recovery didn’t work. We just got a blank file.

I rewrote it for her based on the information we had and what I remembered and tried to make it sound like what a 13-year-old would write because it was basically my fault and she did do the work. I did have her sit with me as I wrote it in case she didn’t like something I wrote, but it was sort of cheating. I’m okay with that cheating since I know she worked hard on it.

First, though, I went into the settings and turned on autosave.

I like LibreOffice, but why the hell is that not on automatically? Honestly, I don’t really understand why someone wouldn’t want their documents autosaved, but I’m pretty sure most people would want that.

This isn’t fucking 1993. I shouldn’t have to remember to save a document anymore and it shouldn’t be lost forever because of it.

Like I said, I like LibreOffice. I don’t really want to trust documents to Microsoft or Google. But this was really annoying.

  • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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    5 months ago

    Us older folks automatically hit save every few minutes. But not saving days worth of work is asking for trouble.

    • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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      I’m feeling old right now, thx

      I even impulsively hit Ctrl+S when writing comments on Lemmy once in a while

    • Chainweasel@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I was going to say, it was absolutely drilled into our heads to save after every paragraph.
      My high school teacher would occasionally flip the breaker for the computers in the school computer lab just to give those of us with bad saving habits a hard reminder.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Your teacher would probably get raked over the coals for traumatizing the kids if she did that now

        • JDubbleu@programming.dev
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          Auto save with Google Docs style snapshots has so little overhead I’d hardly consider it a trade-off. We have insane amounts of disk storage and extremely reliable non-volatile memory. The only reason against it that I can conceive of is confidential data you don’t ever want to exist outside of volatile memory.

          All modern word processors use auto save and it kinda blows my mind libre does not do this.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        They can. Just have to turn the autosave on. Better to manually save still just in case

    • ℛ𝒶𝓋ℯ𝓃@pawb.social
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      5 months ago

      Young folk who have lost hours of progress in robotics programming projects too… Once is enough to learn your lesson. The inevitable second time is traumatizing. By the third time, you hit Ctrl+s five times after every paragraph.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        I don’t think OP’s kid is gonna learn the lesson here. Sounds like Dad was handling the typing for her, and then when things screw up he’s blaming others for it. Not a good environment for a kid to learn in.

        • moon@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          That was my sense too. OP isn’t letting his kid learn the hard lessons for themselves.

          Also what kind of an excuse is it to say she sucks at typing? With practice she will improve, so let her do her own homework

    • assembly@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I still do this regularly while using Google docs even though I don’t think it has any effect.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      I am an older folk. I grew up with an Apple II. I just have gotten used to autosave being on automatically in pretty much every word processor I’ve used since probably the mid-1990s. I just can’t imagine why they decided to not have it on when you install it.

      • eric@lemmy.world
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        I think your memory might be failing on this, because we’re about the same age and autosave wasn’t really a common feature in the 90s. MacOS didn’t introduce autosave until OSX Lion in 2010, and Microsoft’s auto-recover (which was their only feature even close to autosave until office365) wasn’t introduced until the 2000s and didn’t work properly until 2007.

      • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
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        5 months ago

        Never assume something works until you’ve verified it. And even then assume it’ll break some time

      • BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        What word processors? Even Microsoft office doesn’t have autosave on by default unless you’re working off of One Drive/Share Point online.

        Why would you switch to different software and assume it works the same as another?

        • subtext@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Yep, my thoughts exactly… my company doesn’t want us to use OneDrive because of some security fears, so none of our work has autosave. Just because it’s 2024 doesn’t mean everything has autosave. Even working in a browser doesn’t always have autosave, I use some online programs daily that you have to remember to Ctrl + S.

      • Neato@ttrpg.network
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        Agreed. It’s standard practice now. At the very least LibreOffice should ask you on document creation if you want it on.

        There’s no reason to create the extra work of the past unless you are specifically making a nostalgia product.

    • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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      5 months ago

      And “save as” every few times (or every time if the document is important).

      I lost a lot of work hours once because I was using a program that saved a backup copy every time you saved (so that you’d always be able to recover the previous version), and the damn thing crashed while saving, thus corrupting both the save file and the backup. Never. Again. Hard drive space is less expensive than my time and what’s left of my mental health.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        I worked as a kitchen designer and for each customer’s meeting I’d made a new file with everything the same except the date in the filename. So worst case I’d lose a day’s work.

    • ChexMax@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      There are free 10 finger typing classes online. Frankly it’s a bit fun, similar to learning an instrument! I did one during downtime at work because I was a 6/7 finger typer, and always had to look for numbers or punctuation other than . , ! ?

    • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Furthermore, if the laptop randomly reboots for no reason, autosave won’t save you. You just need a tiny bit of bad luck for the computer to crash while saving, corrupting the perfectly-good file saved to disk.

      Hardly how file saving works. Else you could say the same about a bit of bad luck for the computer to crash while pressing ctrl-s, corrupting the perfectly-good file saved on disk.

      Too many people on this thread seem to see autosave and ctrl-s as two different things, governed by magic and mystery, one of them indispensable to conside nyourself an experienced computer user. It’s the same fucking piece of code, in one case invoked by a timer, in the other one by the end user pressing a key combo.

      Op’s issue was that automated was disabled by default. Obviously autosave doesn’t work it it’s disabled.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      It doesn’t take any money at all to learn touch typing: just google “learn to touch type” and there’s Mavis Beacon type software just written in js, totally free.

      All that’s required is the discipline. If OP’s daughter sits with it 5 minutes a day she’ll be able to touch type in no time.

      Learning as young as possible is the right move.

    • Lemming6969@lemmy.world
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      This makes op a bad parent. Know this first op… The luxury of autosave is the least of your worries.

      • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        It doesn’t make them a bad parent. They are just making a poor choice out of what I assume is good intentions.

    • seppoenarvi@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I was going to say we’ve all lost an essay before we learned to routinely save the document. :)

    • DrMango@lemmy.world
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      Yep. Unfortunate though this is, it’s an important lesson for OP and their kiddo.

      Save early and save often.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        The lesson for the kiddo is more complex and harder to learn: letting daddy do stuff for you doesn’t always mean it’ll be better.

  • Evotech@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Side note : You say she’s a bad typist so you type it for her. But how exactly is she going to learn how to type then?

    Maybe just let her do things poorly and learn

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      As I told someone else, I let her do it when it isn’t a long essay. With an essay, it would literally take hours.

      • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        With an essay, it would literally take hours.

        Ignoring that this would get faster with the practise of typing it themselves:

        How quickly are people writing essays these days? I’m a decently fast typer and it always took me a couple of hours to write a whole essay at that age. Once I was a few years older and was diligent in drafting a really good outline first I’d maybe get it to under a hour at the computer, but the speed of typing was never the bottleneck.

        • Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          All it takes is a few minutes to give chatgpt a good prompt and the copy and casting to the text document. 🧐

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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          Again, it can take her a full minute to type a sentence. She is an incredibly slow typist. This is really the first big essay she’s ever had to write and I wanted her to think about what she wanted to say, not hunt and peck for ages.

          Look, maybe you don’t have kids. Maybe your kids are good typists. My kid has just started down this road of writing real essays and I have decided that typing speed is far less important than critical thinking when it comes to her education. You are free to make your own parenting decisions, but I would appreciate you not questioning mine, especially when you are not able to see the full picture when you don’t actually know either me or my child.

          • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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            5 months ago

            While I won’t debate your decision, please be sure that 1. You recognize how rediculously important learning to type properly is for today’s kids, and 2. That she may not want to learn, and is slow because of it. She may need a reward system, and a defined set time to learn. Good luck, and I hope it goes well for you.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Critical thinking is a high level skill. High level skills must be built on top of low level skills, and people learn thing better when they write themselves. The mechanics of putting the words to paper are an important part of the WRITING process.

      • Tja@programming.dev
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        5 months ago

        Are you going to type her emails and reports when she goes to work some day?

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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              Do you think maybe it might be better, if she is going to write an essay at her age, for her to think about what she is going to say and put it in a comprehensible and logical way than slowly typing things out letter by letter so that each sentence takes over a minute and she can work on her typing skills in other ways which require less creative thought?

              • CyanFen@lemmy.one
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                No. All the other kids in her class are typing their own essays. Why isn’t she?

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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                  5 months ago

                  Which other kids would those be? She’s in online school.

                  And, as I said to the other person, feel free to do what you want with your own kids, but I feel that when my child is writing one of the first essays she’s ever written, her ability to think about it critically is, in my opinion, far more important to her education than hunting and pecking on a keyboard for hours rather than think about it.

              • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                I think that if writing takes a lot of effort it naturally makes people think more about what they’re going to write.

      • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        As a side note, typing well isn’t something that can easily be learned by simply typing more. If her typing is a concern (and it may well be since she’ll be typing much more in college), it may be helpful to search for some typing courses. My impression is that there are some free online ones, but I don’t remember any off the top of my head.

        • wjrii@kbin.social
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          I never truly learned to type, though I had a few weeks instruction in school, and did a few levels of Mario Teaches Typing when I was a kid. None of it really stuck, and typing remains an exercise in hand-eye coordination for me. I topped out at around 70-80 WPM if I’m composing rather than copying, but that’s been good enough for a lifetime of office jobs, and certainly for writing school essays. There is definitely a lower ceiling if you don’t get proper instruction, but simple practice is still helpful.

          • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
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            Perhaps, but that’s a relatively spectacular case. If my memory serves me correctly, the average typing speed is around 40 wpm. And sure, that kind of speed can get the job done but it definitely won’t be a good time. My elementary school was pretty forward-thinking in this respect. They signed us up for computer literacy and typing courses that would last for multiple years that we would do in computer class. I think everyone in my class was hitting at least 50 wpm by middle school. I was typing a solid 70 wpm.

            Anyways, I think there are certain aspects of typing where having guidance could really help. I know people who chicken-peck because that’s just how they’ve always done it and they’ve never broken that habit.

      • Electric@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Just want to say, what a good parent for actually giving your child a hand in school work. The work load has become so insane for children.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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          Thank you, although in my case, it’s required. My daughter is in online school. It’s a public school run by the state, not a private school, so she has real classes with real licensed teachers via live videoconference and the assignments are graded by the teachers. They require a parent to be a ‘learning coach.’ Mostly to keep the kid on track.

          But I also know my daughter has very little patience for bullshit, as I did I when I was her age, so when they say things like “to learn about biological cells, draw a picture of an imaginary factory and show the different parts of the factory and label how they work” (an actual assignment) and it isn’t being graded, it’s just busywork, I tell her we can skip it. I wish I had someone who let me skip that nonsense. Like you said, the workload, or in this case the expected workload is insane. And most of it isn’t conducive to learning. Drawing an imaginary factory- and they wanted kids to do this before teaching them the parts of the cell- isn’t going to help you learn what mitochondria are.

          Meanwhile, she’s getting better grades than she did when she was in public school. It’s working out pretty well.

          • wjrii@kbin.social
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            Drawing an imaginary factory- and they wanted kids to do this before teaching them the parts of the cell- isn’t going to help you learn what mitochondria are.

            That sounds like it’s an exercise meant to get the kids thinking about a multi-faceted system existing inside a single structure, with parts that are interconnected but distinct, and will lead into a common metaphor teachers use to teach about biological cells. Not being graded means they’re not judging the kids on what they know or don’t, but want to evaluate where they are with this sort of thinking and figure out what they will focus on. Also, your kid may be smart and already know where they’re going with this, but others in the class may not. If she does, she could probably knock that out in fifteen minutes. Even if you decide that she doesn’t need to do it, I don’t think it’s stupid busy work, at least not necessarily.

            Some teachers are dumb; we need too many of them and pay them too little for each and every one to be a superstar. The ones coming up with curricula and lesson plans usually aren’t, though.

          • Electric@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Oh that sounds like a much better situation. I only found out public online schools were an option in my second to last year of high school, when the bullshit work load had already been waning. Doing it mostly online now for college and it’s so much less stressful. Wish you both luck. 🤞

      • 🐍🩶🐢@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The only way I learned how to type growing up was from instant messaging my friends. All of those ridiculous typing programs didn’t help. One random thing that might help is a different keyboard, or, different profile keycaps!

        I love me some mechanical keyboards and I like the tactile feedback from “brown” switches. The last one I built I found out about the wonderful world of keycaps, specifically keycap profiles. I fell in love with MT3s as they are a little “cupped”. My fingers sort of fall into the scoops and get enough tactile feedback to stay on the key and they just feel nice. I haven’t looked at cheaper membrane keyboards in years, but I remember you could pull off the keycaps and put different ones on those, but I have no idea how they are now.

        If you are interested in mechanical keyboards, you can usually buy a sample kit that has all of the different switches and you may be able to find something similar for keycaps.

        I guess what I am trying to say is a different keyboard, or even keycaps, may help her learn. Though I do realize that this stuff is expensive too. As someone who is on a keyboard everyday, it became a tool to invest in.

        https://drop.com/buy/drop-mito-mt3-cyber-custom-keycap-set

        • wjrii@kbin.social
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          No need to go crazy with the first one. That first step from laptop keyboard or membrane pack-in is the biggest jump you’ll ever make in typing experience. a brown-switch gamer board with the RBG turned off and some cheap Amazon “CSA” style keycaps might be all you’d ever need. Of course, even that type of thinking can lead to certain… rabbit holes.

  • jdnewmil@lemmy.ca
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    While I can understand you wanting autosave on in your situation, I much prefer autosave off because I often open files to see what is in them and do not want to automatically modify them just because I accidentally hit a key and delete it. Automatically changing stuff is a choice you should have to make, not a feature that I have to race to disable.

    • leftzero@lemmynsfw.com
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      Exactly. I don’t want my computer doing things without me telling it to. If I want it to save the file I will tell it to save the file. If I don’t tell it to save the file, I most definitely don’t want it to save it behind my back. Auto save is an anti-pattern, especially if it overwrites your manual save files.

      (Saving an independent recovery file, preferably including undo and redo history, might come in handy in case of crashes, sure, but it should be optional and never on by default, out of privacy concerns; other users might use the computer, and it’s safer to assume that the previous user might not want others to see the documents they had open last time.)

    • BlueÆther@no.lastname.nz
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      5 months ago

      I work with 365 and have to create docs from yesterday’s version (or last weeks etc) all the time. Auto save can be a real pain in the arse.

      Turn it off, save as <yyyy-mm-dd-DocName>, oh hell auto save is back on…

      • IHawkMike@lemmy.world
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        Just mark it as final then. This whole thread is infuriating. People working themselves into pretzels with their misguided reasons for not wanting auto-save when they really just don’t know to use the software.

        OP is right. I use Office 365 and haven’t lost work on a document in over 10 years. Auto-save absolutely should be the default.

        • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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          Or not trusting autosave because they lost a document once in the 80s when autosave didn’t exist, and now they tell everyone to compulsively press ctrl-s because software can be trusted enough to drive a car, but not save a file every minute or so. Bonus point when they introduce themselves as I’m a software developer…

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      What freaks me out is when I open a file, make no changes, go to close it, and I get “Do you want to save the changes you made?”

  • tyler@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    This thread is absolutely terrible. I’m very sorry op. As a software dev, I think I’ve hit the save button maybe ten times in the past 2 years. You are right that it should auto save by default. That’s just required in this day and age. People saying they don’t want auto save because they don’t want cats losing their work literally do not understand how auto save works in the vast majority of modern systems. A simple example is Google sheets, where you can literally see every change made to every character in every file throughout time. You’re not going to lose anything. Software devs solved this in their own tools literally decades ago. My job is literally editing text files all day long. I can’t remember the last time I lost data due to a crash or a cat or anything.

    Some people even mention LaTeX which literally has a solution with Overleaf. If software doesn’t autosave in this day and age, it’s shit software.

    What you have here is another case of Linux users jumping to defend the only things they have to defend, even if it’s absolute shit.

    • ObsidianZed@lemmy.world
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      Man, maybe I just grew up in a different time and/or environment but I still to this day manually save obsessively. I use VSCode most days and feel like I’m constantly hitting the save hotkey. With that said though, I am just not a fan of most autosaves. I like to know what the current contents are and whether or not I have unsaved changes.

      That’s just me though.

      • ShadowCatEXE@lemmy.world
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        Yeah, I don’t trust the auto save to save my work properly. I work as a Software Engineer, and any small change I make, even if I’m not done with the change and I’m just thinking, my hands immediately default to CTRL+S.

        Always always make sure your work is being saved if it means something to you. Especially since windows will force update and reboot your computer. Battery’s can die, power can go out and your computer shuts down. Applications can and will crash.

        • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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          Why do you trust ctrl-s though? You are a software engineer, you know that a bug in the piece of code that saves the document would affect both calls, regardless of whether its invoked by a timer or by the end user pressing keys, right?

          I mean we have all been bitten by op’s problem In the past but it was exactly the same issue, autosave not enabled (most likely didn’t exist) what’s with all these, I don’t trust software to do it’s job so I do things by hand?

          Particularly from software developers or other technical users. Found a bug in a piece of software, report it, you don’t need to change your behaviour for the next 20 years and tell everyone anecdotes about you still don’t trust a regression.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            ctrl-S is deeper, older code. And yes, a bug in that would affect both manual and automatic saving. Meaning the bug has greater exposure and therefore would be detected faster.

            More easily detectable bugs are less of a problem, because lack of alarm indicates lack of those bugs.

            It’s this: (P => Q) => (!Q => !P)

            Basically P is the bug existing and Q is someone detecting it. The more powerful the implication arrow on the left side of that equation, the more powerful the implication arrow on the right side. Or if you prefer probabilities: a greater conditional probability on the left means a greater conditional probability on the right.

            Worse bugs that affect more systems are less worthy of the user’s attention.

      • voluble@lemmy.world
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        Mmm. I grew up in a different time too. Makes me ponder how the software circumstances of that time built in us a very different idea of what an iteration actually is, when it comes to writing. The fact that we couldn’t go back and atomically dissect the history of a piece. That a draft, and an edit, were something heavier. Maybe we’d have to think a bit more slowly and carefully before irreversibly casting a previous version into the ether.

        Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making a “gen z bad” post. Just reflecting on how things are different these days, and maybe it leads to a different kind of work.

      • rxin@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        Lots of VSCode extensions appear to assume manual save is on, so if you have autosave, they spam notifications like crazy. “Ooh you have syntax error in your config, please fix this now >:(((((”

        Notifications were what made me abandon vscode lol

    • fhqwgads@possumpat.io
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      Thank you! My God, the amount of holier-than-thou “it’s your own fault” in this thread is mildly infuriating in and of itself. Auto save and versioning have been a thing in Word for at least 8 years, probably over a decade but that’s the first version mentioned in their docs, and I struggle to think much software I use regularly that doesn’t have some form of it. Hell, even the new Notepad on Windows keeps your changes when it’s accidentally closed.

      I like most open source software but this sort of attitude in the community and what seems like an absolute disdain for any UX concept from the past 20 years makes me very hesitant to recommend it almost anyone outside very specific technical circles.

      • pirrrrrrrr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        People make mistakes, that’s why we automate things. If a system relies on a human not making mistakes it is doomed to fail eventually.

        Saving manually should be a feature, but autoaave should be on by default these days, unless 30+ years of people losing work due to not hitting “save” manually has taught us nothing.

        Crashes happen. Errors happen. Pets and children happen. Any major document editor should be able to auto save and replay a very long history of actions.

        Improve the system, because you can’t improve people with a code patch.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          unless 30+ years of people losing work due to not hitting “save” manually has taught us nothing.

          It has taught us to take responsibility for saving our work

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          Improve the system, because you can’t improve people with a code patch.

          But a person can improve themselves before they can improve the software they work on. There’s less collaboration and centralized planning required for an individual solution to this problem.

      • guacupado@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I mean, it is? I don’t even use LibreOffice, but god I’m thinking of my help desk days and dealing with people getting angry at everything except themselves.

        • fhqwgads@possumpat.io
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          If people make a mistake occasionally or are willfully ignorant that’s a user issue. If almost everyone in this thread is talking about how you should push a button every 5 seconds on a machine designed to automate tasks maybe that’s a design issue.

    • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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      What you have here is another case of Linux users jumping to defend the only things they have to defend, even if it’s absolute shit.

      Funny how OP is using libreoffice on Windows though, what’s there Linux-related to defend? Did a Linux user hurt you? If anything this is another opportunity for some snarky comment about Windows being shit and crashing for no reason since the 1990s.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      “The year is 2024. Any car that doesn’t automatically brake when it encounters an obstacle is a shit car”

      While the above may be true, it’s definitely not a reason to say:

      “I shouldn’t have to use my brakes”

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    On the other hand… consider if your cat had walked over the keyboard before it rebooted and replaced it all with hhhhgggggggggggggggggggghgf before it auto saved and replaced the document. Would you still be an advocate for auto save?

    It sucks to lose work, but this is clearly a user error.

    • qwertyqwertyqwerty@lemmy.one
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      UXD would state that this is a software design issue, and not user error. The software should be designed with crashes and “lost” user data in mind.

      • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        That is true. I could’ve sworn LibreOffice had a recovery mechanism similar to MS Office after a crash.

        • JaxNakamura@programming.dev
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          Even LibreOffice can only recover what has been saved. And if autosave is off, there might be less to recover than desirable. Again, that’s a UXD problem.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      I don’t have a cat and we did this out at a cafe, so yes, I would still be an advocate for it. I think that most people do not have that issue even if they have a cat.

      • JaxNakamura@programming.dev
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        Can confirm, have a cat and don’t have that issue. Because I lock the screen when leaving the machine unattended.

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      This is an insane scenario: my software design decision is, despite recovery mechanisms like previous versions, file history, and undo mechanisms, I’m afraid if a cat uses a keyboard I’ll accidentally save changes I don’t want to a word document.

      Lol. The only user error was choosing libre office instead of a user friendly software stack that has reasonable defaults and r recovery mechanisms.

      • arglebargle@lemm.ee
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        Libre office is fine. You have no need to bash it. And it does have recovery files, this example is… odd.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        Yup. The fear is input that wasn’t intended to be saved, being saved.

        Your inability to comprehend the scenario doesn’t erase it.

        • biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone
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          You realise if it’s saved you can now use features that are built into the software, that get saved, like using ‘track changes’ to accept or discard edits granually. You have file system level version control to choose previous versions, you have an undo feature built in. Three different tools to use.

    • Nakedmole@lemmy.world
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      Auto-save can usually create a new save with a timestamp, every time it saves. It´s called incremental auto-saves.

    • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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      It sucks to lose work, but this is clearly a user error.

      Didn’t wanna say it but yeah, 100%.

      Also I was kinda suspicious of the simultaneous claim that the PC randomly restarted and LO crashed. And there’s no recovery file. But that’s probably just me. For all the faults Windows has, failing to catch programs with unsaved work when restarting isn’t one of them I’ve ever experienced.

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    Never trust autosave. Everything from notepad to Visual Studio gets the Ctrl+S treatment when something is updated.

    • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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      Is that because of bugs, or shitty software that you don’t trust autosave? Isn’t it likely that ctrl-s is affected by the same problem and regardless of how compulsively you press the combo, it does in fact nothing?

      Note that OPs instance simply had autosave disabled, not really a trust issue

      • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Autosave has intervals, shit can happen between those intervals

        I’ve lost good work to a program crash / power outage / other sudden loss of work enough times to know that trusting autosave when it’s there is a fools move

        • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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          Fair enough obviously a real issue considering that it is not just you but many other in this thread, that are posting the same or upvoting I do wonder what software, or and electricity grid you are all on and if you are typing from a war zone though. It has happened to me too, mind you. Once. It was some sort of word processor, in the 1990s before autosave. Been spending my days on a computer since then for work and hobbies, can’t say I remember a single other occurrence after that.

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    First of all, as a time honored tradition it is customary to say this: Never, ever trust an autosave. Manual saves and backup, always.

    With that out of the way, yeah, libre office is kinda bad at the regular user stuff. If you aren’t a fiddler who goes through options first and sets their own personal preferences, a bad time will be had.

    Also, apparently crashes might reset the auto save tick depending on the version used, so check twice if it happens again just to make sure.

    Ps: Never had an issue with it personally, but it’s hit or miss with its users.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      Also, apparently crashes might reset the auto save tick depending on the version used, so check twice if it happens again just to make sure.

      Oh just fucking great. Thanks for telling me that. I think I might just try a different office suite.

      • Cosmonaut_Collin@lemmy.world
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        You can always try OpenOffice if libre office isn’t working out for you. It has all the same suite options as libre office. I think it has auto save by default. I haven’t used it in a while though.

      • Nougat@kbin.social
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        Unpopular opinion: Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are free on the web. Yes, you need a Microsoft account. Would it be ideal to use a FOSS product? Maybe. But schools and workplaces have a preference for Microsoft Office, so the specific skills in that office suite are going to more easily translate to real world situations, and there will be a lower chance of compatibility issues when sharing documents with other people or organizations, in either direction.

        • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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          i wouldnt push excel hard here on the web. its still pretty fragile/full of incompatibilities to the point i cant use it in my day to day, i have to open the local application.

          • Nougat@kbin.social
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            That’s fair, but it stands to reason that if a Microsoft web product isn’t super compatible with its own desktop product, a third party would be less so.

        • subtext@lemmy.world
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          They’re free on desktop as well. Microsoft would so much rather you learn and love their tools that they’re happy to let you use them for free because it means you’re going to keep using them as an adult / professional / senior. My parents will never leave Excel / Word / Outlook because it’s what they know and love and they’re happy to pay for it in perpetuity.

          https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

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    Sadly she had to learn the hard way, as I remember when writing exam papers my rhythm went something like this:

    Type type Ctrl+s … Type type Ctrl+s … Type type Save as on USB … Type type Ctrl+s …

    • Landless2029@lemmy.world
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      I’ve got ctrl+s hard-coded into me early on. Every paragraph I’ll save.

      I do miss hitting save and looking over at the floppy light to make sure it’s updating haha.

      Type type save… :looks over for spin click click blinky: … good…

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    to be fair, word doesn’t autosave either (unless you’re using onedrive)

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    First thing you teach someone who is going to use a computer, is to save the document every 4 minutes. Who knows when the power will go out… But I am sorry for her essay, and thanks for telling me that autosave feature is disabled by default. I would have never known.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      and make sure you press Ctrl+S at least five times every time you want to save. I swear it sometimes doesn’t work the first time.

      • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
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        What is wrong whit your computer and why do you say that others should press ctrl-s five times like we were practising magic? Report a bug with the software that you use if it doesnt work, or replace your keyboard

    • PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@lemmy.ml
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      You can set VSCode to autosave pretty much every keystroke. you should be able to do that for all office apps too IMO

        • SpookySnek@sh.itjust.works
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          Many people still drive older cars due to costs and environmental factors, meanwhile there’s no real reason to use an old version of a word processing software unless you really want to due to nostalgic reasons. And automatic braking doesn’t even exist on every new car…

    • Zacryon@feddit.de
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      I agree and disagree at the same time.
      I agree, people should learn how to use technology.
      I disagree, technology should be easy to use.