First off, thanks for all the time you spent testing the various approaches in project management. I’ll use your post here to reply from with “new” information:
In all transparency, I have no skin in this game. The way MacOS works is precisely how I expect it to work, and what my entire “temporary canvas” workflow is built upon. I suppose I’m even being a bit selfish, because if this behavior changes on Mac to mimic Windows, I’ll be rather put off.
To everyone else following this thread, here’s what we found. It seems like MacOS and Windows both handle .bak files similarly, except for the rather import difference that Windows will indeed DELETE .BAK FILES associated with the unsaved project you’re working on when you exist without saving. So @Reco29’s and @JuergenP ‘s comments now make perfect sense. On MacOS, the bak files are saved, and even span multiple unsaved projects while still being cleaned up by the Auto Save parameter rotation settings. To me, this is ideal.
I presume you’re on Windows then, correct? I totally agree with you. I don’t think the software should think for me. I set up .bak files to be created, and they should be. Just because I choose not to save a project doesn’t mean the .bak files should go away.
While I’m not sure Windows actually deletes .bak files after saving (in C14, anyway), I found the “clutter” comment interesting, as to me the clutter would happen if I was forced to save a project in order to retain the .bak files.
I start blank projects in a specific temp folder on purpose, knowing that my .bak files will be created and maintained “12-deep,” whether I save or not. If I’m into a creative session “long enough,” then I’ll Save to an appropriate folder structure, or just save it right in the temp depending on what I’m doing. No matter what, the original “Untitled1-xx-xxxx.bak” files are kept. When I create a new project the next day, the 12 backups I’ve set are included in that rotation for the new project. It’s perfect for me, and just because I don’t save a project doesn’t mean I may not want to go back and retrieve some work.
What I would NOT want is to be “forced” to save a project just to retain the .baks - that would result in all manner of clutter…. I’d have temporary project files created only because I had to, and each one of those could have multiple baks files.
To me, this rather well supports the OP’s frustration with deleting bak files. As a Mac user, I’d be pretty torqued if this behavior changed.
The real reason I got through all this is not just to identify the very different behavior between OS’s, but really to identify that nowhere in the documentation is any of this covered. All these discussions about it without identifying that MacOS and Windows behave entirely differently, yet not even a mention of how .bak files work in the help file tells me that we need a better way of at least communicating to SB “hey guys, please document this.”
Anyone think that adding a “#DocumentationRequired” tag is a good idea? It would only work if SB looked at it, but I think everyone can agree that the docs in general are not very thorough, and “regular users” may be a good source of when and where Support could begin filling in the gaps.
Just a thought.
