[Bf-committers] Handling of user data.

[Ryan Inch]

Hi Sander,

 > The thing with Blender is - to me as a casual user - that it's really 
a high end piece of software that's very flexible, but also very hard to 
comprehend. I think that maybe for 90%-95% of users the only things that 
they will ever miss are non-saved created images, materials in the 
shading editor and maybe actions or geometry nodes setup.
 >
 > The whole fake user concept is very useful, but also very hard to get 
your mind around as a casual user.

 >  It takes quite a lot of discipline from the user to check the 'fake 
user shield' box for everything that you *might* want to keep when 
reopening the file. It's really easy to forget and overlook, because 
it's not easy for people to understand either.

You're right that a large portion of users wouldn't mind Blender saving 
everything and would in fact welcome it, but a small portion of users 
would be very negatively impacted by that change.  I don't see why we 
shouldn't accommodate both of their needs.  While users always want 
easy, that's not always what they need; the main problems here are data 
loss at one end and too much garbage data at the other, so we need to 
make sure both these problems are addressed, and if the result is that 
users end up learning better data management practices along the way, so 
much the better.

 > It would be great if there was some sort of smart way to seperate 
'intentional' user data from dat 'leftovers' i.e. stuff that might be 
useful when reopening a file and stuff that is essentially garbage data. 
Because if you don't know what the data blocks are *while* using it, 
going over a list upon saving and closing won't make things better.

I find that usually when programs try to be "smart" and think they know 
better than the users, they end up causing more problems than they 
solve.   Plus, a lot of the proposals for improved data managers include 
previews of the data so that you'll know exactly what you're 
keeping/discarding, and it's one of these improved data managers that I 
would expect to ultimately be shown on quit (although a simple list may 
be used at first while it's being developed).

 > 
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/proposal-explicit-management-of-data-blocks-and-possible-deprecation-of-fake-user/22852
 >
 > This is a proposal that appears to be on the right track in thinking 
about these things. I think it's a really good idea to try and make the 
distinction between things you'd like to keep and the things that are 
fine to lose as easy as possible for the user. The easier this becomes, 
the less likely accidental data loss will occur.

 > I think that maybe for 90%-95% of users the only things that they 
will ever miss are non-saved created images, materials in the shading 
editor and maybe actions or geometry nodes setup.

Actually, there are lots of cases where I don't want materials to be 
auto-kept, especially when you get a lot of duplicates from appending 
objects from other blend files.

Ryan Inch (Imaginer)