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Our office recently updated to a new version of the Office Suite, and it still has an icon in the upper-left corner to perform the 'Save' function. Floppy drives have not been in use for years, and many children would not recognize a 3.5 inch floppy disk on sight. Programs have used this icon for years, because we have yet to find a suitable replacement. The CD/DVD can no longer represent saving, because they have come and gone. Even moving to the more abstract Piggy Bank icon would not work, because they are seldom used in the modern age. A USB Key icon may represent saving in some form, but the may not be around much longer if another medium gains favor. Does this mean that the venerable 3.5 inch Floppy will represent saving information to future generations, or should it be replaced by a different symbol?
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Tuesday December 20 2016, @11:07AM
Coming from a VAX/VMS background, I have never understood why overwriting an existing file should be regarded as saving information.
OK, I've had a pop at VMS below, but, on reflection, maybe it was ahead of its time. With modern storage capacities, there's plenty of space for multiple versions or infinite undo histories... even with bulky files like video, images and audio you're mostly saving an "edit list" rather than multiple copies of the data. With a GUI you can display the "history" in a more useful way than VMS's "hello.txt;237".
Incidentally, Apple added file versioning to Mac OS years ago, and changed the Save/Save As.. protocol in their applications to "Save (this version)/Duplicate (create a fork)" with a time-machine-like scroll back through previous versions. Someday, MS Office and Adobe CS will support it and people may notice.
Then, one day, someone might come out with a version control system understandable by regular users - like "git" but, well, not like git [xkcd.com].
The "save" concept is already depreciated in many mobile apps, particularly on iDevices that hide their filesystem from the user. Instead, we have transparent auto-save plus an (emerging standard) "Share" button for distribution.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Pino P on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:17PM
Then, one day, someone might come out with a version control system understandable by regular users - like "git" but, well, not like git
If you can buy something on a web shop, you can use Git.
Add to cart: git add somefile.txt
Check out: git commit -m "warn about kernel bug 107651"
Shipping: git push
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:20PM
The "save" concept is already depreciated in many mobile apps, particularly on iDevices that hide their filesystem from the user.
I have lost data in Newton OS, the predecessor to iOS. NewtonWorks auto-saved without saving more than one level of undo. I accidentally selected all, deleted everything, and did something else that counted as a separate action, and my document was gone.