Re: [HS] Re: Autosave on item action

Thank you for your reply. My comments are inline.

--- On Wed, 2/9/11, chrisant_wa <[email protected]> wrote:

From: chrisant_wa <[email protected]>
Subject: [HS] Re: Autosave on item action
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 10:39 PM







 



  


    
      
      
      --- "mad_ady" <mad_ady@...> wrote:

> However, I have just upgraded my PDA from Windows Mobile 

> 6.1 to 6.5.3 and I keep having this problem sometimes: 

> whenever I close the program and reopen it I get a warning 

> telling me the database was not closed properly and it 

> loads what was previously saved. 

> This doesn't happen all the time, but it usually happens 

> when I am in the store ready to shop and notice that my 

> list is usually empty. This is not nice (happened 4 

> times in the last month). 

> 

> I am not using a special program to kill applications 

> instead of sending them in the background, 



What device is this?  For example, all HTC devices have a built in special program that kills applications instead of sending them in the background.  There will be an option to disable that somewhere in the HTC control panel settings.  Some other manufacturers have similar "enhancements".
My PDA is a Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket Loox N560 (it was in its prime 3-4 years ago) and is running newplowe's WM 6.5 ROM (http://fsc.newplowe.com/). I know about killing programs versus sending them to the background, and in the previous 6.1 ROM I was using such a program (MagicButton) to do just that. There were no problems with Handy Shopper. Now, in 6.5.3 the windows layout has changed, and I no longer get a top bar with an X/OK button in the right corner. I get a bottom bar that occasionally has this button. I'm using ArkSwitch as a program manager, and the default behaviour for all programs is to go to background when they lose focus.


> but I am ocasionaly rebooting my PDA (other processes 

> make it hang). I know there is a manual save button (that 

> works fine), just that sometimes I forget to click on it 

> while making changes, and this spells disaster.



HS has always automatically saved whenever it is sent to the background, and whenever the screen is powered on while HS is the active app.  So unless you are rebooting while HS is open, the rebooting should not be affecting HS.



I bet your device has taken over the [X] button and is killing apps without your knowledge, and that this is leading to the problem.  Look into turning off that "feature" of your device.
I usually switch between running programs by tapping the "Home" button to go to home screen and then selecting either the application's shortcut or entering ArkSwitch to select a differnt running application.I've seen I can't always reproduce the problem - and so far I didn't manage to build a pattern and see when it looses data. I've seen that sometimes it autosaves the changes when closing (I get a glimpse of the save progress bar), but again I get data loss from time to time...


> I would like to ask for a feature request - a user 

> selectable option to enable autosave when a change is 

> done to the database (either an item is checked/unchecked, 

> or something is added or changed). It might lower 

> performance, but it my case it would bring sanity back :)

> 

> Is my proposal something feasible, or is there a known 

> workaround for my problem? 



That could result in HS hanging for several seconds after every action you perform (tiny databases might hang only for half a second, very large databases could hang for 30+ seconds).


I understand that such an option would affect performance. This is why I am recommending it to be user selectable - in special cases (like my own) it could be useful and the user would be happy to pay the performance penalty. Another option would be (if it were possible) to ask for saving changes when the application is getting killed (I'm not sure if all kill signals can be caught by the application in Windows Mobile), or maybe a periodic autosave (every X minutes) (also user selectable).
I will try to see if I can narrow down the cases when the application looses data and see if I can work around the issue.
Thank you for your help,Adrian



    
     

    
    


 



  






      

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]