This is about the most recent version of LibreOffice on Windows 10. I can’t speak for other versions.
My daughter worked hard on her social studies essay. I type things in for her because she’s a really bad typist, but she tells me what to write… but I didn’t remember to manually save her social studies essay yesterday, and for some reason the ThinkPad rebooted, LibreOffice crashed and we lost the whole thing… because autosave was not automatically on when I installed it.
No, recovery didn’t work. We just got a blank file.
I rewrote it for her based on the information we had and what I remembered and tried to make it sound like what a 13-year-old would write because it was basically my fault and she did do the work. I did have her sit with me as I wrote it in case she didn’t like something I wrote, but it was sort of cheating. I’m okay with that cheating since I know she worked hard on it.
First, though, I went into the settings and turned on autosave.
I like LibreOffice, but why the hell is that not on automatically? Honestly, I don’t really understand why someone wouldn’t want their documents autosaved, but I’m pretty sure most people would want that.
This isn’t fucking 1993. I shouldn’t have to remember to save a document anymore and it shouldn’t be lost forever because of it.
Like I said, I like LibreOffice. I don’t really want to trust documents to Microsoft or Google. But this was really annoying.
I don’t know how so many snarky comments are getting upvoted here. Barely an ounce of empathy to be found in this entire comment section.
It isn’t hard to understand why you’d focus on the content of the essay rather than the mechanical process of typing it out. Clearly you’re letting her type shorter things, so she’s gonna get better over time even if you type for her on these longer essays for the moment.
Sorry you lost the essay. But I’ll look on the bright side and say it sounds like you’re doing a fine job working with your kid on their homework, and ideally this is just a growing pain as you use FOSS in the course of their education. I use LibreOffice too and am sometimes similarly frustrated at unintuitive or unexpected design choices.
Thank you, I appreciate the comment. And yeah, she will get better over time. This is one of the first essays she’s ever had to come up with and I think the first where she’s had very little in the way of detailed instruction.