i remember that QuarkXPress was notorious [v2 to 3...] for a particular
file-saving problem; if it bombed when the doc was open, the doc was lost. i
particularly remember in a studio where i once worked having just finish a
200 odd page guide on the [delightful] french region named
'charente-maritime', and we were making a backup copy, from XPress, to
another disk, when the power went. not only was the copy lost - normal, it
wasn't finished - but the original!

acting on this i would suppose that a 'safe' save procedure should do the
following:

- determine that there is enough space on the target volume
- create a file in the temp folder of that volume
- transfer the original file to trash
- transfer the saved file from temp to target folder
- delete the temp file

normally with a process like this, the last copy will not be touched and so
be available in the event of a crash. also, if their is a problem before the
new saved file gets transferred to the target folder, the user can be told
that the saved file _may_ be found in the 'temporary items' folder in the
trash.

question:
am i being [overly] paranoid?
has anyone done this?
does the system do it like this anyway?

:-j