Revert to saved greyed out even when changes on disk

ams001 · Feb 11, 2015#12015-02-11T13:21+00:00

The "Revert To Saved" option under "File" is always greyed out, even when there are changes to the remote file on disk.

I regularly use the Remote File option and when I "pull" in changes from mercurial that update the file being edited (assuming any changes already saved), I have to first "edit" the file before being offered the "Revert To Saved" option and then discard local changes. This is annoying for me especially when coming from the Windows version which DTRT.

Mofi · Feb 12, 2015#22015-02-12T12:31+00:00

In UltraEdit for Windows the command Revert to Saved is always enabled which I have never noticed before.

The command is useless if active file is edited without usage of a temporary file as all changes are done directly and permanently on active file and no other application can modify this file while opened in UltraEdit because UltraEdit opens files without usage of a temporary file with SHARE DENY WRITE.

This command is designed mainly for discarding all modifications by user applied to temporary file only and reload original file contents. But it is right that it can be also used to reload original file if modified by another application and file change detection feature is disabled or user as not reloaded the file on prompt or the file is not a local file and therefore file change detection is not running for this file like on an FTP file.

UltraEdit for Windows has the file change detection feature which is by default enabled and informs the user about a file change on original file while a copy of it (temporary file) is viewed/edited in UltraEdit. The configuration settings for this feature are at Advanced - Configuration - File Handling - File Change Detection. There are also the configuration settings for usage of the extra feature File Polling which can be enabled for an opened file like a log file in menu View if this feature is enabled at all in configuration.

As I'm not using UEX, I don't know if UEX has also a file change detection feature and what are the default settings for this feature if UEX has this feature, too. Take a look into preferences of UEX.

Report this issue to IDM support by email (see top of the page) if you think that also in UEX this command should be always available even for not modified files.

ams001 · Feb 12, 2015#32015-02-12T13:46+00:00

Thanks for the info.

The file polling feature does not appear to be available for uex, but it does have a file detection feature which does not appear to work for remote files. It did not even prompt/warn when when did a save of a remote file that had changed (remotely) - the changes were overwritten. It does appear to work for local files though (I was prompted when changed). The option is enabled so this does appear to be a bug for remote files.

I'll report as suggested.

Mofi · Feb 12, 2015#42015-02-12T15:47+00:00

It is not a bug that file change detection is not active for remote files. This feature is used only for files on local disk, never for remote files (network share, FTP, SFTP, ...).

The reason is easy to understand: avoid permanent data transfer via network which could be a problem if the network is not a small local area network, but a larger LAN or even WAN (used with VPN tunneling).

ams001 · Feb 18, 2015#52015-02-18T11:18+00:00

It may not a bug but it is a feature that should be relatively easy to implement.

Firstly, when saving you already open a connection to the remote host. It should not be difficult then to check timestamp/inode/whatever to determine if the file has changed remotely since it was last loaded or saved and provide a popup warning that remote changes will be overwritten and giving you the option to opt out.

Secondly, the Windows version already operates polling to check for changes where the period is customizable, and thirdly opening, checking, then closing a remote connection (failing silently if not available) is pretty cheap - your browser and email clients do this all the time in the background and you probably do not even notice. 90%+ of the free Android apps do this many times per minute to cycle through those dastardly ads, and that sucks mobile bandwidth. You cannot seriously be telling me that a "normal" (i.e. not a rural UK) broadband connection cannot easily cope with the trivial load? Besides, if you give the user the option to modify the polling time, they can do so sensibly. I would far rather have a poll a minute to know when remote files have been updated.

Both cases are far better IMHO than to accidentally overwrite remote changes, and the network cost is cheap...

Mofi · Feb 22, 2015#62015-02-22T09:40+00:00

To summarize your last post: you miss the polling feature UltraEdit for Windows has but not yet UltraEdit for Linux/Mac.

So I can only suggest to send a feature request email to IDM support, see top of the page.

I'm relatively passionless regarding file change detection / polling feature of UEX as I'm using only UltraEdit for Windows with having never used polling feature and also do not really need file change detection feature for local files. I use UltraEdit for editing text files, not for viewing files which update frequently while viewing.