Implementing autosave

[MartinDedron]

Why not implementing autosave on InDesign?

It already exists in much more ressource-hungry software such as AfterEffects.

Instead of recovering documents that are deleted by "accident", it could also recover files that have been closed also by accident, but in a "non accidental" (according to the software) way. For example, when you just choose to discard the saves because you went too fast.

It's easy to blame it on users for not having save their files. Otherwise, no matter how often we're used to save our files, sh*t happens. That's why autosave exists. No one wants to loose their work.

Why not including it in inDesign?

Letting its user how often to save, and how many files to save, with a quick button to clean cache?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Probably because saving any but fairly short docs can take an appreciable amount of time. Few of us want to be interrupted for 10-30 seconds or more without warning. 

To do more granular saves, as in other apps that at most cause a brief blip in response, will probably have to wait for a major update to the ID engine. That is, the current core only understands a full save.

Learn to hit Ctrl-S every time you're going to look away from the screen for a bit. All the auto-protect stuff in the world can't really beat that, in every app you use. 😉

[Conrad C]

Probably because saving any but fairly short docs can take an appreciable amount of time. Few of us want to be interrupted for 10-30 seconds or more without warning. 

By @James Gifford—NitroPress

Photoshop, which works with much larger files than InDesign and also does only full saves, worked around that by implementing background saving. Now I am usually unconcerned about how long it takes to save a large Photoshop or TIFF document, because the progress bar is down in the status bar not blocking user actions, so as it finishes the last save, I can continue editing the document without waiting. A long save is only a problem if I need to close the document and move on, then of course it’s necessary to wait for that.

When InDesign can do something like background save is answered by your other good point…who knows when Adobe will decide it’s a good time to redo the save code. And I agree that the one thing that has helped me avoid disaster over the years is developing the habit of pressing the Save shortcut any time I’m not in the middle of something.

[rob day]

Hi @Conrad C , If you look at @Marc Autret ’s code it’s having the finder make a copy of the file before the document is actually saved, so it’s very fast—doesn’t do a Save As or Save a Copy from ID. Tested it on a 2GB InDesign file and it ran in less than a sec on my internal SSD drive.

[rob day]

Hi @MartinDedron , A Save, Save A Copy, or Save as can be scripted. InDesign has an IdleTask event, which can be be triggered at any interval so the save could be at a set time.

I often want to close without a Save, so you probably want the script to save copies, which could cause problems depending on the file size, network, and disk capacity. I can post some examples.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

And this. I often do what-if and 'experimental' things on developing docs, and a hard save could leave me with a disaster on my hands. If ID had autosave, I'd likely leave it disabled. 

I am currently doing work in a client Word 365 system, and autosave is sticky, persistent and auto-enabling. It's bitten me several times. 

I will maintain that a little document... hygiene is a better solution than relying on dumb auto functions... but I am likely in a minority. 

[Marc Autret]

Hi @MartinDedron 

A middle way solution is suggested here:

https://github.com/indiscripts/IdGoodies/blob/master/snip/DocBackupSave.jsx

Best,

Marc

[MartinDedron]

Thank you! This seems to be a solution.

[rob day]

it could also recover files that have been closed also by accident

Hi @MartinDedron , Marc’s script wouldn’t help if you accidentally closed without saving. It could be attached to an idle event set to a timed interval—you could force a duplicate and save every x minutes.