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From: jr@LF-SERVER-2.BBN.COM.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: auto-saving of files (good or bad)
Message-ID: <8712040630.AA07195@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Fri, 4-Dec-87 02:25:27 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8712040630.AA07195
Posted: Fri Dec  4 02:25:27 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Dec-87 22:06:18 EST
References: <592@cos.COM>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: jr@BBN.COM
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 18

>> The ideal way do handle auto-saving (from my point of view, of course)
>> is to wait until the keyboard is inactive for "n" seconds.  I don't
>> think most people can maintain full speed typing for long enough to
>> cause trouble.

BBN's PEN editor had a (configurable) combination of the two
techniques.  After N keystrokes, the editor looked for an idle time of
K1 seconds to do its auto-saving.  It would also auto-save after K2
seconds since the last auto-save.

There was a posting I stashed away somehwere that implemented
timer-based auto-saving by hooking to display-time.  If I get
inspired, I might expand it to have this behavior too.  This depends
on the availability of subprocesses, unfortunately; the portable
version probably requires source changes.

/jr
jr@bbn.com or jr@bbn.uucp