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 --- choose your rut carefully: you will be in it | electric: oz@sni.ca for the next seven miles. -SF trail signpost | [416] 449 9449 x154
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
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
> 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'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 > 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. 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
> 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 find cut-cut-"oh dear"-undo-undo quite common as well, which is when
undo on the menu would be useful.
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Andrew Higham
Edinburgh Portable Compilers, 17 Alva St., Edinburgh, EH2 4PH, Scotland, UK
andrew@epc.ed.ac.uk phone: +44 31 225 6262 fax: +44 31 225 6644
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>
> > 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.
>
and you can do each of a long sequence with a single mouse click
once you've selected the "u".
i must say that running sam under X11, i've found it much easier to use since:
a) using 9term - which means i'm using the same input model most
of the time when entering commands - eg. previously i found it hard
to get the hang of the `output point' in the sam command window, now it
seems perfectly natural.
b) adding the patch which gives "mouse-to-type" - so it matches my window
manager and other windowing applications. previously i frequently
typed in the "wrong" window requiring a subsequent "undo". i also now find
it less irksome going to the command window for a single command,
gerry
---
Gerry.Tomlinson@newcastle.ac.uk
Department of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Tel: +44 191 222 8139
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom. Fax: +44 191 222 8232