TL;DR: What I want is one autosave file instead of many (to avoid clutter) with configurable limitations (to prevent it from becoming obscenely large; limit how many documents it can save at a time) with a "hide autosave file" setting (in Linux this would rename the file from krita_autosave or something like that to .krita_autosave, and in windows it would hide the file in whatever way their file manager likes to do it) and an option to optionally set a custom path for the autosave file (so if the default is /tmp or something, it can be moved to /home/user/krita_autosave, and then it can be hidden) the default limitation of the file should probably be just one document being autosaved at a time, maybe two. And I also want a button in the file menu to open the file recovery/load autosaves menu.

From another thread:

askinner wrote:Thanks for the suggestion. It appears that Krita either regularly saves in the background or does a dump if it's about to crash out. Here is my Temp dir with old Krita saves.



Thanks again for the help!

Holy **** that's a lot of clutter, and potentially wasted hard drive space! 45MBs and this is with only one big file (10x20MB files and we have 200 MBs, this stuff adds up fast, from 200MB to 2GB for users like me that use huge resolutions) so everyone who's working with high resolution files essentially needs double the hard drive space they normally would unless they regularly clean up the mess Krita has created in that folder (or just turn autosaves off completely). It's good that it's no longer saving the backup file to the same folder as the original file (it isn't, right? because that is HORRIBLE, it creates such a mess of duplicate files on my hard drive it drives me nuts. It's even worse than having them all clutttered up in that one folder), but wouldn't it be nice to have just one autosave file that can remember only a set number of documents at each time (I personally would set that value to 2) instead of many files creating one big mess? Oh and in case the load-autosave feature doesn't kick in after the program crashes (which it oddly doesn't seem to be doing anymore, regression?) we need a button in the file menu to pop up the autosave menu to load autosaved files in case krita crashed and we didn't save our work. Right now I have no idea where files are autosaved in Linux (Where are they?), but it's pretty clear where they're saved in Windows, and the way it's implemented there is not good at all.

Since the only times autosaved files are actually used is after a program or system crash (or some unfortunate event that forces the program to shut down) when the program is launched again, autosaved files are usually never loaded throughout their entire existance on your hard drive, and those that are used only get used once or twice tops, since people actually save their work before closing the program most of the time. Wouldn't it be nice if there was just one autosave file instead of many? (Rids us off that complete mess that's been created in the above post's Temp directory, some people do like to store their Temp directory on a limited space, like a RAMDisk (windows) or tmpfs/ramfs (linux) so creating this kind of mess in it is just not ideal for everyone, some people also have SSDs that host their tempdir, SSDs with again limited space.)

Have a look at my fstab

Code: Select all

#Root
/dev/sda1               /               ext4            rw,noatime,nodiratime,data=ordered      0 0
#Storage
/dev/sdb1               /mnt/stash      ext4            rw,noatime,data=ordered         0 2
#Tempdir
none                   /tmp            ramfs           nodev,noatime,nodiratime,nosuid         0 0
#Ramfs in user .cache dir
none           /home/cestarian/.cache  ramfs   nodev,noatime,nodiratime,nosuid,noexec          0 0


Root drive is an SSD (don't want to hoard up huge .kra files on that), /tmp is on my RAM (want to hoard up huge .kra files even less on that) and same with my .cache directory. /tmp being on tmpfs is common, .cache being on tmpfs or ramfs is less common.

Which leaves us with another problem, for users who do use their RAM for temporary files directories (like Temp, tmp and .cache) RAM is volatile making it a not so nice candidate for hosting autosaved files (if the system is restarted all autosaved data will be lost unless the contents of the RAM are saved to a file on shutdown and loaded on startup, then the data will still be lost if the system crashes), and for those users it would also be nice to be able to select a custom path for autosaved files (this is something Photoshop for example is missing, and it can cause a huge amount of grief for windows users that move their Temp directory off their root drive)

The way I'd like it to be in my personal case is one autosave file (.krita_autosave) in my home directory that is set to be able to save up to 2 files. The way I'd like it to be set up by default (what would make sense) is one autosave file (krita_autosave) located in either windows's Temp directory or the linux user's .cache directory or the linux /tmp directory with the default files that can be autosaved at a time to the file set to 1.

Maybe it could be a configurable setting, but I don't know. Most of feature requests probably are configurable because of the xckd comic where changes break work flows. For instance, relying on auto saves to create incremental copies of work in order to go back to a previous version. Krita devs are really great in the regard that they listen to people's work flows and try to help them so maybe they can help with your request too. However, with the kickstarter goals and port to qt5 your needs may not be addressed immediately.

Have you made a wishlist request on the bug tracker yet?

Yeah you're right, configurability is always good.

I really don't like bugtrackers, I've had nothing but negative experiences with them, bugtracker sites also tend to be super primitive, I significantly prefer github's issue system over all bugtrackers I've seen, at least as a user.

It's too much of a hassle to actually create an account for the sole purpose of reporting bugs (or in this case request features) for one bloody program, it's a primitive, outdated and hideous system, I will have no part in it. The way I see it developers should want bug reports badly enough to not make it a pain in the neck for users to report bugs.

I already have a forum account right here at kde.org, when I can move from the forums seamlessly on to bugs.kde.org (using the same account), I will use the bugtracker. Until then I will not touch it

Bug reporting should be an experience made as easy as possible for the user. It shouldn't require effort (like creating an account just for the one program you are trying to report bugs for) to aid development with bug reports. Open source programs are actually the only programs I have had this issue with (for example, most proprietary online video games I play have a built in bug-reporting system that doesn't even need you to exit the game to report bugs, much less actually creating a special account for it, and as for others, they tend not to have bugtrackers, they just have a forum section for reporting bugs and usually another for requesting features, which is what I am using this forum section for since I won't touch the bugtracker)

Hell will freeze over before I go through KDE's terrible account creation system again, there is no account creation system I have hated as much as the one provided on this site (I mean you can't even select your own username...)

For the record, the fact that Krita saved the entire day's worth of autosaves just bailed me out today. You can put in a config if you like, but don't remove the capability.