I would like to suggest that LibreOffice could have the option to save documents by default on exit, without asking. This would enhance rapidly changing between numerous documents. (https://youtu.be/9di3MpESnSU)
What's wrong with the confirmation box?
Not exactly wrong, but suboptimal. In practice that box does nothing to prevent user mistakes. And not having it allows quick changeovers among documents, which leads to a series of other hidden benefits (https://goo.gl/NwP2Ch) In fact Google Docs is implemented this way.
Personally, I don't like those auto saving but let's see what the community says: https://plus.google.com/107566594492891737454/posts/8aeTyEvWhht
¿It's not clear for me, perhaps only if 'Always create a backup' or 'Versions' are active, so you have a undo, for people that don't know of this 'Autosave', and some way of indication about it is enable, like changing the graphic for the indicator on the status bar that 'The document has been modified', or adding a text indication to the title bar 'Autosave on close active'? There is another issue and no minor to solve, how to close without save? What to do when closing LibreOffice without close the document? So maybe a temporary option only for the current LibreOffice session, selectable on the status bar indication about 'The document has been modified', or ask with the first close dialog, but there is not way to revert this last.
Unless you have versioning on by default, like you do in google drive, having it save automatically on exit without a prompt is bad UX to be enabled by default for all users. But if a user wishes to set such a setting always on and as such take the responsibility if things go wrong, it could be a feature added to Tools > Options > Load/Save > General.
I would offer it as an alternative option, and see how it works for a while. If most people like it or not. If you ask me how I would implement it if it was my software, I would get rid of the option to save, as Google Docs do. Not because Docs do that way, but because it makes all the sense: in that scenario having the save option does nothing. Also the backup also seems residual in that situation. It could simply be saved directly into the file. Lately, including a message somewhere indicating that the document is been auto-saved sounds like a good idea to me, since traditionally text editors haven't worked that way. Perhaps that could be omitted in the future, if the behaviour becomes common.
Bottom-line is that manually saving is heritage from a time were writing to disk was resource expensive, but today it does nothing. Even on preventing user mistakes.
(In reply to Alberto Salvia Novella from comment #7) > Bottom-line is that manually saving is heritage from a time were writing to > disk was resource expensive, but today it does nothing. Even on preventing > user mistakes. There will always be users who have slower computers, hard disk or ram, that auto saving wont good UX, but you also have users opening documents from networked or online sources where auto saving would also be bad UX, and with auto saving with versioning on by default will lead to larger files. The best solution is to fix the current autosave feature that has been disabled in bug 65509 as it doesnt function correctly.
G+ poll shows a split with 50% people encouraging this enhancement. So we should introduce this function optionally with a checkbox under Tools > Options > Load/Save > General (ideally next to 'Save AutoRecovery information') labeled "[ ] Auto save on exit" set to off by default. The checkbox should have indented radio buttons for "(o) Add versions" and "( ) Override file" disabled unless the auto save checkbox is on. Since the function works only on exit, feedback is not relevant. ESC had concerns about the versioning as it does no diff but saves the whole content at the moment, is error-prone and difficult to test.
(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #9) > The > checkbox should have indented radio buttons for "(o) Add versions" and "( ) > Override file" disabled unless the auto save checkbox is on. As most people dont use versioning and ESC mentioned the problems with it, it would be better that '(o) Add versions' be the second radio button.
(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #10) > As most people dont use versioning and ESC mentioned the problems with it, > it would be better that '(o) Add versions' be the second radio button. Clearly not following the discussion at the poll. It's rather a blocker for this request, we need proper versioning before this can be done.
Saving on exit would be the same thing as getting rid of the "cancel" button on all dialogs and only having an "OK" option. Clearly a bad thing. Only in extreme situations should "auto-save" affect the working document - it certainly does not apply to the general desktop application, and doing so as a default config would be a tragedy.
@Justin L Not because with the "cancel" button you usually don't get an "undo" button, hence "cancel" is the only way to undo. But not in a document.
Let's resolve this as WF. If users want a very special behavior it should be possible to execute uno:Save followed by uno:Quit via macro - and replace the exit function by this.