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.

  • Eager Eagle
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    210 months ago

    Which is why I say they’re both UX decisions.

    yet very different - binning them into the same category is not helpful. Single click as default is ok, autosave off as default is probably not.

    • @[email protected]
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      210 months ago

      Auto save is extremely dangerous and should be off by default. Computers should never do things, especially with important documents, without the user telling them to. If the user wants to save the file, they’ll tell the computer to save the file. If they don’t tell the computer to save the file, they clearly don’t want the file saved (if they do want it saved and expect the computer to do it for them without being told to, they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a computer, sharp objects, or open flames, as they clearly could be a danger to themselves and others).

      • Eager Eagle
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        010 months ago

        Computers should never do things, especially with important documents, without the user telling them to

        L take. Computers have always done thousands of things in the background. Autosave does not mean “overwrite the original file”.

    • Primarily0617
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      10 months ago

      yet very different

      which is why my first words to you were “it is and it isn’t”

      binning them into the same category is not helpful

      both are caused by people in the foss space not paying enough attention to ux

      increased attention to ux could solve both

      personally i think categorising all work solely through the lens of severity is unhelpful

      • Eager Eagle
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        10 months ago

        risk mitigation definitely comes before preference, whether you call them both UX or not

        • Primarily0617
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          110 months ago

          or i could argue that an issue 90% of people will run into is a higher priority than one 2% of people will run into

          or i could argue than the risk of accidentally opening something you didn’t want to is higher than the risk of losing unsaved work

          the reason foss sucks when it comes to ux is this attitude of insisting that ux problems are somehow some “other” category of problem, rather than an engineering constraint that needs to be designed around like every other one

          case in point, for some reason you’re still refusing to acknowledge that they’re both ux problems. and if you do, your original reply ceases to even make sense.

          • Eager Eagle
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            10 months ago

            you’re still refusing to acknowledge that they’re both ux problems

            I’m not - I’m saying calling them both UX problems is unhelpful when one is clearly more important than the other. In fact, single clicks by default does not even rank as a “UX problem”, it’s preference and habit.

            If you’re unable to differentiate what’s an actual problem from what’s mere user preference, you’re no better at judging what’s worth putitng time into than the open source contributors you’re pointing at.

            • Primarily0617
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              110 months ago

              if you aren’t refusing to acknowledge they’re ux problems, you’re saying it’s unhelpful to call them what they are, which is obviously nonsense

              and again, sane defaults are ux

              • Eager Eagle
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                10 months ago

                Naming something accurately does not make the observation helpful. You’re the one writing nonsense.

                • Primarily0617
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                  110 months ago

                  if you’re just going to take us back in circles again this discussion is a bit pointless, isn’t it?