Conference bulova::decw_jan-89_to_nov-90

513.0. "A Style Question" by HGOVC::KENBERKUN (Klaatu Barato Nikto) Fri Mar 31 1989 02:51

    I don't know if this is the best place for a pure "style" question,
    but for lack of a better place I'll ask here.  Feel free to tell
    me to go somewhere else...
    
    I couldn't find the answer to this in the style guide, although
    I may have simply missed it.
    
    Our applications (for instance paint, DECwrite, etc.) seem to me
    to be pretty loose about writing over existing files.  When you
    save a file and it already exists, they never ask you if you really
    want to wipe out the old file.
    
    Now this may make sense when you have chosen the "save" option on
    a file that you have simply modified.
    
    But does it make sense if you use the "save as" option and select
    a pre-existing file to save your new work on top of.  It seems to
    me that this is a potentially easy and disastrous mistake.  It would
    be easy to put in a caution box (well, semi-easy, see earlier
    discussion about how we handle caution boxes), to ask if you REALLY
    want to wipe out the old file.
    
    Friends, how do you feel about this?  Am I violating guidelines
    if I put such a caution in or leave it out?
    
    Thanks in advance for comments/suggestions/etc.
    
    Ken B.

    
    I think your question is targated at the Ultrix/Unix environment,
    where there is no versioning of files. I suppose it this case a caution
    box will help prevent a mistake..
    
    However in the VMS land, you do not "wipe-out" a file, it simply creates 
    a new version, old one is also available. 
    
    Robert

There has already been some discussion of the appropriate behavior of
file selection in CLT::XUI.  You might want to take the discussion there
for more insight.

Dick