So, I was composing an email in gmail's web interface earlier, and when I went back to proofread it I found that the first three and last two paragraphs were there, but the middle ten or so had been eaten (nom nom nom!). It was really annoying. So, apparently using an editor that auto-saves (as gmail does) is not enough--I need one that auto-saves under different filenames, e.g. filename.30[seconds], filename.60, etc. (and then, preferably, asks me if I want to keep the autosaves after I'm done editing). So, does such a thing exist, or will I need to hack it myself? Cheers.
Doesn't MS Word do this? I know that when I manually save something I'm working on, multiple copies of temporary files appear in the same directory until I close it out. You have to turn hidden files on to visible, but they're there.
A keylogging program might work out for you. It'll just record every thing you type and you can go back and cut and paste. Unfortunately I think it'll also record all your mistakes so you'll have to do some heavy editing.
It might, but it's not compatible with my operating system. Also, I'm looking for a text editor, not a word processor. As you said, it would work, but it would be very inelegant. Since modifying an existing text editor would not be too difficult, I think, I will probably go that route. Thanks for the replies, both of you.