Layout file recovery

LayOut
8

There are two mechanisms in LayOut that are designed to avoid loss of work.

  1. Backup files. When you manually save your LayOut file, the existing file on disk will be moved to a “backup” file name. On Mac, the backup name has a tilde appended. On windows, it has “backup of” prepended. This guarantees that you’ll always have two copies of your current file - the most recent saved version, and the previously saved version. This guards against crashes that happen during file save, and also guards against users accidentally saving changes that they didn’t want.

  2. Autosave/Recovery. When LayOut opens a file, it unzips the file into a temporary folder and then reads the data from that location. When LayOut closes normally, this temporary folder will be deleted. If LayOut crashes, the temporary folder will remain, and LayOut will show it to you in the “Open files” dialog in the “Recover” tab. This is where Autosave comes in - the autosave mechanism will periodically save your current file into this temporary folder.

So, an “optimal” crash recovery looks like this:

  1. Run LayOut again
  2. Find your document in the “Recovery” tab of the “Open Files” dialog
  3. Open it
  4. Recreate the last few minutes of work (the amount will depend on your autosave interval)
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