When lyx crashes, it does an autosave first so nothing is lost. When restarting lyx, i.e. "lyx somefile.lyx" I usually get the question about the autosaved file being newer, and if I want to use it. That is a very nice feature.
Except if the crash happened to some new and yet not saved file. An emergency "somefile.lyx.emergency" is created, but "lyx somefile.ïlyx" does not ask if I want to use the existing emergency file if "somefile.lyx" itself does not exist. All I get is the question wether I want to create a *new* file, and that makes me nervous. I believe this is much worse for people with less knowledge of computers, those probably donï't figure out that they can rename the emergency file manually. It'd be really nice if lyx checked for an emergency save file even when no "original" exists, in order to avoid this problem. Ideally, lyx won't crash at all. But it is this fabulous stability that caused my way of working - just begin a new document and don't save at all for hours. Lyx won't ever loose my work anyway, not even the alpha-quality 1.4. :-) I sometimes have a document open for days, and save upon close. One gets used to stability. Helge Hafting
