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by Shazback 5327 days ago
Here's my work flow when I'm writing a long document: - Create/open "Master copy". - Regularly Save/enable Autosave. - When I have completed a chapter/segment, or before for lunch/supper, I Save and Save As on my backup HDD with a time-stamp/chapter number.

Like this I have one copy that I can edit and is always up to date on my main HDD and I have a whole record of copies on my backup HDDs. If I want to see how I edited chapter 3 whilst I was writing chapter 6 (they're related in the plot) I can.

I can't imagine this being something unknown of in the use of other applications. A franchisee that tracks various performance metrics each hour/day on a rolling database (month/year) sends a copy at regular intervals to the franchise owner/manager so that general franchise performance can be evaluated will have the same problem.

I can see how Duplicate -> Save is "only one click more", but the one-click solution worked well. If the "paradigm shift" is related to auto-saves, why not simply have the auto-saves create a new hidden file by default. Either the changes are saved (cue overwriting of the opened file), or the changes are saved as. If the user exits without saving, the hidden file can be marked for auto-delete in X days/hours, making erroneous exits recoverable. If there's a crash/loss of power, the hidden file is prompted for recovery at the program's next start.