🚀 go-pugleaf

In article [a whole bunch of 'em] ...

Well, I've watched this thread go long enough without inserting my own
two cents.  Everyone has their own opinion -- MS is to blame, Apple
is to blame, the original poster is to blame, the lords of Cobol are 
to blame, ...

Speaking as someone who has a made a living (you call that living?) 
writing a fair stack of books, specs, manuals, and the like, I can
unequivically say "doo doo happens".  My fault, your fault, nobody's
fault -- whether the trashed files come as a result of a bad program, 
freak lightning, the washing machine entering the spin cycle, or my
own sloppiness ("whoa, lunchtime, let me just slam this file back out
to the disk under a new name and ... ARGH!") -- at some point you're
going to end up with "your life's work" sitting trapped in an 
unreadable file.

Anyways, having been in the same boat as the original poster, I 
can sympathize with his loss but not his whine.  It just does
not make any sense to have a single copy of any file that is in
a state of flux -- there are too many things that can go wrong.
The only **sane** approach is to save off the files incrementally
("mydoc at 10:00", "mydoc at 11:00", etc.)  

Some systems will do this for you (PC Wordstar makes a *.bak file
for you, the DEC operating systems VMS and RSX both append version
numbers every time you save a file).  With MS Word, you'll have 
to be a little bit conscientious (and conscious:-) when you save
your work (what's the cost of an extra floppy for all those backups
in comparison to eight hours of your time???).

Bottom line, if you expect the worst, then you'll be ready for it
with backups in hand; if you take the Pollyanna approach, then 
you get what you pay for.  But don't whine on the net -- it's 
demeaning to you and annoying for the rest of us.

Bill Cramer
IEX Corporation
{uunet,convex,killer}!iex!cramer

(The above opinions do not reflect those of IEX Corporation.  In 
fact, 20 minutes from now they probably won't even reflect mine.)