From: Paul Kinnucan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I'm not familiar with this feature. Could you please explain it to me.
Paul, here's a quick rundown:
Emacs has (of course!) more than one recovery mechanism. You can
learn about both of them (sort of) in the standard Emacs info file.
Search for "* Auto Save" in the "File Handling" section.
Basically, when you have file buffers that have been modified and not
yet saved out, Emacs periodically saves a copy of the file under a
temporary name, and keeps a record of which such files exist typically
in your home directory. If your Emacs session should crash (or have a
network or OS crash out from under it) Emacs can find the more-or-less
up-to-date files and offer to let you open the in-progress file the
next time you revisit that file.
This depends on the auto-save feature. (See auto-save-mode.) When
file foo.txt is being edited you will typically see in the same
directory a .#foo.txt symbolic link which indicates the file is being
edited. Periodically as you edit (I think it counts keystrokes) a
backup file named #foo.txt# will be written containing a snapshot of
the file. In addition, the command M-x recover-buffer (very useful if
you tend to edit before you think) will check if such a file exists
and offer the option of reverting from that file instead of the
original copy.
Naturally, all these things are controllable and alterable and
customizable far beyond human understanding.
Emacs grules!
