I have to admit that I often forget to save my configuration from time to time, so that I work for hours without saving. So yesterday it happend what was bound to happen: my computer crashed and hours of work was lost.
Wouldn't it be possible to add an automatic saving feature in FET? This feature may be project specific, so that I can define different auto save directories in different project, e.g. in Data -> Basic.
I would appreciat auto saving it in two ways:
a) regular auto save
When activating this feature, the user could enter a time span and a directory. FET then periodically saves its configuration in the specified directory. By adding the time and date to the filename of the auto saved configuration, each file would get a different filename.
b) save on generate
When activating this feature, the user could enter a directory. FET then saves the current configuration each time a new schedule is generated (i.e. when the user presses the Timetable -> Generate button). By adding the time and date to the filename of the auto saved configuration, each generated schedule would result in a new file in that directory. This feature would be highly helpful for me in the optimization phase. Here I often tweak on specific parameters for optimizing the schedule. Often such tweaks result in worse schedules, so that I have to revert all modifications or be clever enough to save my configuration before tweaking.
if a) and b) will be added, then we should check the the size of all files (or the number of files) in that directory is too high and warn about that. (i have check code already. so easy to add)
You know that b) is already implemented with the last generated timetable?
No, I wasn't aware of that already existing saving feature, but I would like to be able to jump back multiple generations anyways.
If you add a warning dialog, you should make this warning optional (e.g. check box "warn if temo dir exceeds limit of 1000 files"). I don't mind having thousands of files in such a directory, so that regular warnings would be highly annoying for me.
I know you want to go back in time. I just wrote that, because you told that you got a crash. So you can still get the data and save time.
By the way: Why did it crash? Do you have hardware problems? If you think it is a software problem: Please let us know how to reproduce the crash. We want to fix all crashes. FET should never crash.
Also by the way: You will be wrong if you don't mind about the number of files, since the number of files in a directory and on your whole hard disk is limited by your file system! So if we suddenly write thounds of files in worst case you won't be able anymore to save a single file (and in worst case maybe not the logfile of your OS and so booting your OS might fail)
For example FAT32 can have max 65,534 files per folder and max 268,435,437 files on your whole hard disc.
Quote from: math on January 16, 2018, 10:02:18 AM
I have to admit that I often forget to save my configuration from time to time, so that I work for hours without saving. So yesterday it happend what was bound to happen: my computer crashed and hours of work was lost.
Wouldn't it be possible to add an automatic saving feature in FET? This feature may be project specific, so that I can define different auto save directories in different project, e.g. in Data -> Basic.
I would appreciat auto saving it in two ways:
a) regular auto save
When activating this feature, the user could enter a time span and a directory. FET then periodically saves its configuration in the specified directory. By adding the time and date to the filename of the auto saved configuration, each file would get a different filename.
b) save on generate
When activating this feature, the user could enter a directory. FET then saves the current configuration each time a new schedule is generated (i.e. when the user presses the Timetable -> Generate button). By adding the time and date to the filename of the auto saved configuration, each generated schedule would result in a new file in that directory. This feature would be highly helpful for me in the optimization phase. Here I often tweak on specific parameters for optimizing the schedule. Often such tweaks result in worse schedules, so that I have to revert all modifications or be clever enough to save my configuration before tweaking.
OK, if this is your request, I can try something. But as a custom version. Because:
1) It is risky. We need to test it for some time. Maybe after that we'll add it in the official.
2) For (a) I am thinking of an imperfect solution: only to save the current data if the user is in the FET main window, after a chosen interval.
Let me know how to choose the time interval. Also, how to save the file when generating - single only? The initial file or the locked file?