Subject: (click) undo

From: "Ozan Yigit" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 1994 03:54:19 -0400

does anyone see any problems with adding Tundo into sam message
protocol so that samterm can have an undo item on the ops menu?
[i would like to think that this is not creeping feeturism, but rather
making an appearently very common (!) sam operation somewhat easier to
get at. :-]

oz
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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 1994 00:29:35 -0400

don't dissimulate: of course it's creeping featurism.
that's not a good enough reason to reject doing it, however.
there are better ones.

the frequency of using undo when not already typing commands
anyway is not high enough to justify making the button 2 menu
larger, at least  in my experience.  i'm confused by your 'apparently
very common' remark.  perhaps you undo nearly as frequently
as you do the other operations on button 2.  that strikes me as odd.

in any case, putting something on the menu just because it's
common begs another question: is there something even more
common that should be there?  global substitute?  indent?  reverse
indent?  go to matching brace?  pipe through formatter? and so on.
better to leave the worms in the can.

-rob

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From: "ozan s. yigit" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 1994 23:37:22 -0400

indeed, i undo with some frequency, and a good  portion of those undoes
are necessiated outside the sam window, which means going back and forth
between the sam window and the current window. i cannot however use my own
odd editing activities as a basis good design, and i also think that there
may be more than one design issue involved here. i still wonder what other
sam-fans think. what is the typical undo activity of an average sam user?

on a related topic: undo is also omitted from the protocol, which
of course reflects the needs of the current samterm. a more general
protocol would probably include it.

oz

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From: [email-masked] (Steve_Kilbane)
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 1994 04:27:43 -0400

> between the sam window and the current window.

I'm not sure what you mean by this - in my experience, undo is done in the
following circumstances:
	- as part of a cmd-u-cmd-u sequence, as i try to get the cmd *just*
	right.
	- in a long sequence of u,u,u,u... as i decide that what i've done for
	the last ten minutes is the wrong tack
	- just once, because i'm forgotten to change the focus before typing.

I don't see that there's a great need for repetition that justifies changing
both menu and protocol. The nearest case I can think of is application of the
second case (lots of undos), where it's necessary to scroll the target window
to see how much of the sequence you've unwound. However, the fault here is in
samterm - it should scroll to display dot after an undo. 'Course, that's
another can of worms, because samterm doesn't know it's an undo...

> i cannot however use my own
> sam-fans think.

as i've mentioned before, I think the command language is lacking in the
areas of snarfing, cutting and pasting - i've tried to emulate them with
copies to a scratch window, but i almost always run up against "?addresses
out of order" (or whatever it is). I don't know whether there's a solid
reason for their absence, or just original preference. rob?

steve