just here to say how much I love Scrivener - it’s a fantastic tool to work with and i wouldn’t want to miss it!
The only thing I think would be an improvement sounds quite simple: the possibility to turn off the AutoSave function. I sometimes delete stuff knowing than I can always go back to the safe version unless I hit “save” again - I’m used to this procedure through all the other programs that work that way. Scrivener means thinking the other way around - which is a great danger for losing things. I think it’s nice for those who like it, but not for me. Guess, I got to get used to making a snapshot before actually start working.
There may be a better way to hijack the autosave function, but you could try going to the general preferences and just entering a huge number for “autosave after (NUMBER) seconds.” It wouldn’t completely get what you want, since eventually it would save everything, but it’d delay it a bit. You might be able to just leave it blank and thereby turn off autosave completely, but I don’t know if it would just default to some given number in that case. Could be worth a try.
Thanks for the kind words. There are no plans to enable the turning off of the autosave, as it is built in throughout the program and, although it sounds as though it should be simple, it would actually involve a lot of changes under the hood.
However, if it’s just that you are worried about making changes that get saved, there are a couple of options:
Go to File > Backup To to make a (preferably zipped) backup of your project before you start hacking away at it. (Version 2.0 will offer the possibility of automatically backing up every time you open or close a project.)
When about to edit a document, just hit cmd-5 to take a snapshot first. That way you can always roll back to the original at any time.
Entering a huge number actually works very well because the autosave timer is not based on an absolute interval, but rather the time elapsed since you last did anything in Scrivener. Thus, every time you click on something or type in a letter, Scrivener waits the given number of seconds until auto-save triggers. With a number like 99999 (27 hours), you can be confident it will never trigger unless you just leave your computer on all weekend.
Do note that if you take that option, be very careful to actually save your work! If you crank up the auto-save, forget you did that, and then leave your project open all week, a simple crash could destroy many hours of work.
That aside, using Snapshots is exactly what this feature is meant to address. Always snapshot before making edits and you’ll be safe from the woes of accidental aggressive editing.
