File Save and Save As Bug

Vkooi

We use WavePad Master's edition v 2.10 in a remote part of Africa where the simple interface and big buttons are ideal for the semi-literate people work with. They use it to edit programming for a low-power village FM radio station. In all, a Great program. But on both our win98 and XP computers, the program will truncate a file of, say 10 minutes and 100 meg, down to 20 seconds and 7 meg if for any reason the save process is interrupted. This happens with MP3 as well as WAV files. This happens especially with the cancel button which appears with the save "progress themometer", as well as in quite a few other more obscure circumstances, mostly having to do with two or more files being open at the same time. My wife has documented these cases, and we would be happy to send them to tech support. There really should be a better fail-safe mechanism in the program - loosing an hour's worth of editing is bad, but loosing the original unedited file as well is simply unacceptable for a $50 program. We are computer-savey people, and are very sure that this is a real problem and not just our own stupidity. We can (and do) of course make backups of files and all, but could you imagine people putting up with MS Word if it corrupted people's documents?

nchngoc

Hi,

We have not received similar reports from customers about this. Please give us more details on how to repeat the problem and we will try to figure it out.

Thanks.

Vkooi

nchngoc wrote:

Hi,

We have not received similar reports from customers about this. Please give us more details on how to repeat the problem and we will try to figure it out.

Thanks.

Sorry for the delay in getting back. We live 200 miles from email and internet and only come out to civilization occasionally. Here is the simplest case: You make changes to a file and then decide you don’t want to keep those changes, but you do want to keep the original file.

Click on File/ Save. While saving, hit cancel on save thermometer. Then close the file with red X (on file window). At “Do you want to save changes?” Answer “No”. Only a small part of the original file will still be there.

A variation on this case is the following: New file, yet un-named and un-saved.

Click on File/ Save file as; While saving, hit cancel. File is still open complete, but only part of it has been saved under the given name. Close file using the X, no message or warning given “Do you want to save file” File closes immediately and only the partial file has been saved.

We have observed more subtle variations on this phenomenon (having to do with two or more open files), but these two cases should help pinpoint the hole in your save algorithm.

musikone

Vkooi wrote:

Sorry for the delay in getting back. We live 200 miles from email and internet and only come out to civilization occasionally. Here is the simplest case: You make changes to a file and then decide you don’t want to keep those changes, but you do want to keep the original file.

Click on File/ Save. While saving, hit cancel on save thermometer. Then close the file with red X (on file window). At “Do you want to save changes?” Answer “No”. Only a small part of the original file will still be there.

A variation on this case is the following: New file, yet un-named and un-saved.

Click on File/ Save file as; While saving, hit cancel. File is still open complete, but only part of it has been saved under the given name. Close file using the X, no message or warning given “Do you want to save file” File closes immediately and only the partial file has been saved.

We have observed more subtle variations on this phenomenon (having to do with two or more open files), but these two cases should help pinpoint the hole in your save algorithm.

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I do not understand your problem, since the "solution" seems to be very simple. I do this all of the time with no problem whatsoever. When you have a file which has been worked on and you do not wish to save the changes that you have made since opening the file, simply click on the "close" box for the particular file that you are working on. This is a smaller X in the upper right portion of the screen, as opposed to the larger X for closing the Wavepad application, which I presume you want to keep up and running.

You will then be asked whether or not you wish to save the changes. Just answer "no" and the file will be closed. Your original file will be preserved _intact_, which is of course just what you are looking for.

So what am I missing--if anything? Try it.

Vkooi

musikone wrote:

I do not understand your problem, since the "solution" seems to be very simple. I do this all of the time with no problem whatsoever. When you have a file which has been worked on and you do not wish to save the changes that you have made since opening the file, simply click on the "close" box for the particular file that you are working on. This is a smaller X in the upper right portion of the screen, as opposed to the larger X for closing the Wavepad application, which I presume you want to keep up and running.

You will then be asked whether or not you wish to save the changes. Just answer "no" and the file will be closed. Your original file will be preserved _intact_, which is of course just what you are looking for.

So what am I missing--if anything? Try it.

What you are missing is that if you do exactly what I said to do, you WILL lose valuable data - something which has happened to me, to my employee, and to my wife on plenty of occasions. Sure there is a work-around. Sure you can be careful to avoid screwing your data. But if this can happen to two western, college educated, computer literate people like my wife and I, you can guess how often it happens to our employee - a farmer in rural Africa producing radio programs for his people. I am a big fan of Wavepad (because it is simple and clear), but really good software is bulletproof. It doesn't need work-arounds and it doesn't need one to be careful. The Save algorithm of Wavepad needs work.