And for those arguing over backup… just work on the file within a cloud synced folder (OneDrive, Dropbox, etc…) and boom, you’re done (for the majority of folks out there. The paranoid like myself will make an extra backup elsewhere, but that’s another story. This is not the place to flex individual tech knowledge.)
Sure, but there are more and more people that don’t want to save their work on cloud services anymore…
Personally I never recommend storing data, and specially not database files like sqlite or similar in any of the sync services…
For most people it goes just fine, but the minute you get an sync conflict, getting that fix can be a lot of problems…
Hi all,
I think at this point, this thread has veered away from a productive conversation, so I will be closing this thread to avoid the discussion escalating further.
Please try to keep discussion civil and on-topic, and avoid any unnecessary antagonism or name-calling.
We are a small development team and an even smaller support team, so we are not equipped to moderate off-topic conversations that don’t meet the aims of this forum (assisting users and gathering feedback).
Note that I have chosen to delete the last few off-topic posts as they don’t contribute towards those aims.
Scrivener Syncing Issues
We do appreciate the feedback regarding Scrivener syncing. We have tried hard to be flexible in how we fit into different Scrivener project structures, we have run 6+ months of beta tests to try to ensure we have covered any bugs or issues, and we have tried to provide enough guidance to help people understand the process.
But syncing is often a complex area to both implement and document, so I fully accept that there is more we can do on both documentation and better guidance and protection within the app itself, and we will continue to work to improve these issues as they are reported to us.
If you experience Scrivener syncing issues, please start a new thread to continue those conversations.
It is generally easier for us to deal with each issue independently rather than having a large number of issues accumulate into a single catch-all thread.
Automatic Backup
I believe it may have been on another thread, but I have previously acknowledged the request to be able to allow users to choose their own backup file location, which is something that is on our list of tasks we are balancing and prioritising.
I agree that backing up files onto the same computer does not provide the same protection or perform the same function as backing them up elsewhere - whether that is off-site, in the cloud, external hard drives etc, and I would always encourage users to make those separate arrangements also.
But the mechanism we have does provide a level of protection against both inadvertent user error (i.e. accidentally mucking up a file), or software error (i.e. a bug causing data to be lost from a file), which are the primary motivators behind the backup system we have implemented – and generally more common than a house fire or complete disk failure.
This won’t protect against every case, but it will protect against more cases than if it did not exist, and so I would prefer to offer some level of protection than to offer none.
Personally, I think the debate around “versioning” vs “backup” is splitting hairs a little. At this stage, I prefer to continue to use the term “Backup” simply because this is a term that is better understood by more people (which is the most important thing in the moment a user has that sudden panic about potential loss of work).
Sorry to post a response and then immediately close the topic, but I thought it was important to at east respond to the points made before closing it down.
Matt
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Hi Matt,
Each time I perform a sync from Aeon, Scrivener tries to resync the external folder as if each file was modified. Obviously it’s not the case, as you have already pointed out, but I suspect “last edit time” or something like that comes to play (considering that’s the only way Scrivener has to detect external changes, I guess).
Just to update on this particular issue:
I have implemented a change for our next build that will avoid updating the “modification date” inside Scrivener unless the content actually changes.
Unfortunately, on Windows, this still results in the modal popping up and it being a several click process to sync everything and close it again, but the sync itself should usually be faster as it will only sync the files that have changed somehow. Note that metadata changes will count as a change, as this mirrors the behaviour Scrivener has implemented.
That fix will be rolled into a future update with a bunch of other small fixes (most likely the next update, unless we have to push out any hot fix for a pressing issue).
Matt
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