Subject: PICO; justification; quit/discard confirm.

From: Mike Ramey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 12:46:40 -0800 (PST)

EXIT PROTOCOL:
--------------

I just lost several hours work when trying to leave pico.
When it asked "Save before leaving?", I had second thoughts
(I actually wanted to continue editing) and replied 'n'.  DAMN!

May I suggest that when the user specifies quit/discard
that they be asked: "Do you really want to lose your work?"

Suggest the following sequence:
	Do you really want to quit pico?  (y,n) [n]
If y:
	Do you want to save to <filename>? (y,n) [n]
if n:
	Do you REALLY want to lose your work? (y,n) [n]
if n:
	continue editing.

JUSTIFICATION ERRORS (^J):
--------------------------

Pico loses the double space at sentence end if the preceding sentence 
ends with: " )

-mr

---

From: Ken Weaverling <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 16:06:39 -0500 (EST)

> EXIT PROTOCOL:

This has actually happened to me a few times. I am not sure that a 
sequence of messages is desirable though.  I hate stuff like this....

Do you want to save?
Are you sure you don't want to save?
All of your changes will be lost, last chance. Do you want to save?
OK, you don't want to save, but are you sure you want to exit now?
Postive? 

Cause idiots like me will just get used to hitting nnnyy out of habbit!

One possibility is to save it anyway in a 'last chance' file, sort of like
Pnews does.   

Example:

Modified buffer: Save before leaving (y/n)? n
A copy of the file was saved to .lastchance in case you change your mind

And only, of course, have one copy. Next time they quit without saving, 
.lastchance will be overwritten again.

Come to think of it, emacs does something similar with quits without saves.

Ken Weaverling          [email-masked]
    Manager of Computer Services
   Stanton/Wilmington Campuses of
Delaware Technical & Community College

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 14:12:00 -0800 (PST)

We have been mulling over the possibility of adding an optional
deleted-messages folder.  Perhaps these messages should go there as
well? 

--DLM

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA

---

From: Ken Weaverling <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 17:26:26 -0500 (EST)

> deleted-messages folder.  Perhaps these messages should go there as

One problem I see with this, we use pico as our default editor. Gets loaded
for lots of things, like when composing a message for Pnews or trn for 
example.  

Maybe just an internal command to retrieve last unsaved message. 

Sorry, I don't have a constructive suggestion on this one. I do fear 
feature overload though.

---

From: Matt Simmons <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 16:51:31 -0600 (CST)

> .lastchance will be overwritten again.
But what do you do if you're editting a Really Large File and have to 
worry about quotas?

Devoted    _n______________________________________________  _________________
Teri      /   \|[]|""  \    |[]|   |[]|   |[]|   |[]|    / || \    |[]|   |[]|
Polo    ,(_____|  |()_()\___|  |___|  |___|  |___|  |___/  ||  \___|  |___|  |
Fan    <_______|__|_(_)_____|__|___|__|___|__|___|__|______||______|__|___|__|
=========\   Walt Disney World Monorail System             ||
LCA  _____\________________________________________________||_________________
  __/ This highway's in perfect shape.  Quick!         Thank god I'm not a
_/ Break it so we can 'fix' it! -- IDOT Motto              F. I. P. =)

---

From: "Amos A. Gouaux" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 17:29:02 -0600 (CST)

> Maybe just an internal command to retrieve last unsaved message. 

Perhaps something like "pico -r" to recover the file specified, like 
with vi?  That would probably be easier than an Emacs style recovery.

  Amos A. Gouaux        Academic Computing Services         [email-masked]
  UNIX and CUTCP        University of North Texas           817/565-4898
  Systems Support       PO Box 13495, Denton, TX 76203      FAX at -4060

---

From: Mike Ramey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 15:45:05 -0800 (PST)

For me, it seems the intuitive thing is ...
after I give the 'exit' command,
  'n' should abort the immediately previous command (exit)
That is, 'n' should abort exit and return to editing.

I have started using ^O frequently during an edit session now!
-mr

---

From: Dean Pentcheff <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 1993 19:21:30 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 8 Nov 1993, Ken Weaverling wrote:
> > ....
> ....
>....

I like this idea a lot!  The flaw is that the user is quite likely to
forget what the magic lastchance file is called.  So, the next time pico
(or pine in compose-mode) is started by that user, it should alert them to
the existence of the backup file and ask if it should be recovered into
the editor.  It should do this even if the user has specified a filename
on the command line, since they may not realize how the recover feature
works. 

-Dean
--
N. Dean Pentcheff 
Biological Sciences, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia SC 29208 (803-777-8998)
Internet addresses: [email-masked] or [email-masked]