Hacker News Reader

Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

Hehe, sure, but there are better ways to do this, and it’s a common need. If the best thing we have is hitting undo 45 times to find something, copy it, try not to accidentally type anything and try not to accidentally lose the clipboard, then redo 45 times, then do a bunch of manual editing… now repeat the entire process for every file, when there are several involved… if that’s sufficient, then SVN is sufficient for source control, and we have no need for Git, right? ;)

My real point is that the “Great Undo-Redo Quandary” is broader than what’s in the article, and the solution discussed is incomplete, doesn’t solve a big chunk of the reason people are using undo multiple times.

View on HN

In the proposed article, it sounds like if you accidentally typed anything you would have to hit "undo" twice instead of "redo" N times to get back. Still seems confusing.

But if you accidentally type something now you can't just hit redo N times to get back. It's gone.

Not with this new algorithm.

"And everything goes back to the beginning"

Is it though? If you really just needed part of what you had and hour ago, then there's nothing wrong with scrolling back to an hour ago, copying that one bit you needed, scrolling back some more to where you were a minute ago, and integrate it as desired?

(which, note, is not window shopping: you didn't go back to have a look and skedaddle; the past is a data store, and you're accessing that data store for productivity reasons)

I feel like it is, so I’m not sure what you’re asking. It’s sometimes error prone depending on editor, and sometimes a lengthy and manual hassle to undo many times & copy old state, and then to merge if it’s not a single contiguous block and not a single file. It’s way easier to do what I’m talking about if I’ve committed changes in git every 5 minutes, but I don’t always do that in advance (most people don’t), and therefore could be nice to have a non-linear undo UI that addresses the workflow example I’m talking about, which happens to be a common reason that people even think about what happens in multiple undo-redo scenarios in the first place. What’s wrong with pointing out that 1- we can make better tools if we want, and 2- linear undo/redo doesn’t solve the whole problem?

Doesn't sound like linear undo/redo is the problem, but rather ability to navigate it. Timestamp the actions and you could offer "undo to 1h ago". Or you could allow searching the undo history.

But I may be having a hard time understanding why you need this as your description just does not fit my typical workflow.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com