Grouped Undos/Redos

[Lucideye]

Is it possible to group undo/redo operations like in many, if not most other editors including Windows Notepad? Because it's really a pain always having to click the UNDO button for say 30 times just to undo 5 words or so. I am so accustomed to it that it would basically make UltraEdit unusable for me if there is no option for this.

Another question is, is it possible that the search dialog box doesn't close after clicking the "find next" button?

Thanks,
Alex

[Bego]

Hi Alex,

1st: never seen sth. like "group-undo".
If I type "Hello word" I do NOT explect an UNDO and the word "world" was gone.
I don't like intelligence like this, because there are situations it does things you never expect ....

2nd: It is possible. Look in the options, "search". Use the small search dialog there.

rds Bego

[Lucideye]

Hi Bego,

Thanks for your reply. Well, basically the "grouped undo" is the default in virtually every editor I know, and this for good reason, because if you want to do undo something, it is not a single char - for that you can use the backspace key - it is a "group" of typed chars, most times a whole word. Even now at the moment I am typing this text here, if I am right clicking in this text field (I use Mozilla Firefox), there is the option UNDO, and guess what, it undoes the last grouped set of typed chars. In Ultraedit unfortunately such a simple default thing like this seems not to be possible.

As for the second thing, yes I have discovered this also, however, never seen an editor that closes the search dialog box (CTRL-F) by default after clicking the "find next" button. This doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

[Bego]

Hi Alex,

well, for the 1st issue try to post a question to idm itself.
I also tried out undo in this text (also firefox).
I didn't see any sense or rule / algorythm how those groups are created.
Sometimes, a few words are deleted up to the middle of a word
For me, this is bullsh...


2nd
I agree, a "leave find dialog open" flag would be good (as nedit 5.5 has for example).
Me, I got used to find and then hit F3 or shift+F3 ...

rds Bego

[Mofi]

I agree with Bego about the undo function. I also hate the grouped undos. The grouping is done by combining all text entered quickly without a pause to 1 undo. So when I for example enter a whole sentence in Microsoft Word without any pause (yes, I am able to do this), the undo will undo the whole sentence. I prefer pressing CTRL+Z for undo x times to undo several inserted characters before undos of groups which are defined by typing pauses. The result of such grouped undos is not predictable. By the way I have set my keyboard repeat rate to maximum and keyboard repeat delay to minimum which allows fast multiple undos by keyboard.

However, that's my personal prefered method of editing and other users can have an other prefered method, isn't it. So ask IDM for the feature for grouped undos.

But take into consideration that UltraEdit was and of course is still a text editor for programmers and not for text writers and I don't know any programmer which likes grouped undos. Programmers do not like undo of a whole block of entered code by a single undo.

[Lucideye]

Well, I *am* a programmer, and be it Eclipse, Komodo or any other IDE/Editor I can think of, they all support grouped undos by *default*, because it simply doesn't make sense to use an undo button/key combination when there is the backspace key for single char undos.

As for asking IDM, you are right, maybe I should contact them.

[undo]

Lucideye, I am a programmer too, and I cannot agree with you more. Why UltraEdit handles "undo" of typed character strings differently from every other program that I know of is quite beyond me, and drives me nuts as well. Before claiming programmers "prefer it this way", I would challenge IDM to even name another editor that that handles undo in this (very non-standard) way.

I wrote to Ian about this back in May, 2002, asking that he at least consider providing an option to make undo behave in the "standard" way that most computer users have come to expect. His response:

"This works on a character basis because I prefer it that way. We get very few requests to change this which makes me think that most users are happy with this. I have no plans to change it."

I have not purchased an upgrade since version 8 for this very reason. I just downloaded a trial of 11.2, hoping that this might have been fixed (at least as an option), but it looks like Ian's peculiar personal preference remains hard-coded, and that I won't be upgrading any time soon.

So, by all means, voice your request, but don't hold your breath.

BTW, the way I believe undo should work after you have typed multiple characters in succession without an intervening mouse click, is that the entire block of text that you typed should be undone as a single operation. (I also completely agree that the backspace key is already there precicely to perform single-character "undo"'s.) These "groupings" should be based solely on when mouse clicks occur, and have nothing to do with word boundaries or "timeout" periods. This is how I believe it works in 99% of programs, is very well-defined, and is completely predictable.

[BillStewart]

FWIW, I agree with Lucideye and undo. I think it's absurd to force us to undo character-by-character. Grouped undo algorithms are pretty common and behave predictably and sensibly. For example, KDE's KWrite editor has this to say about its Group Undos option:

Groups of similar actions are to be considered a single Undo step by KWrite. In other words, a series of regular character keystrokes (words or expressions) would be considered one step and therefore be removed by a single undo operation. If the series of character entries were interrupted by a non-character entry operation (such as a backspace), invoking undo would only remove the entries made since that operation. The next undo would then reverse that operation and so on.

When this option is not selected KWrite considers each keystroke to be a single step. So if the user (with this option active) were to type several words or even sentences without having to make corrections or cut or paste or some other non-character entry operation then a click of the undo button would eliminate all that had been typed since the last non-entry operation. A second click would eliminate that operation and a third any operation or series of entries that occurred before the operation and so on. When not selected three clicks of the undo button would only remove the last three letters typed, or the last three operations.

(Reference: http://docsrv.caldera.com:8457/en/KDEdoc/kwrite/pref-edit.html)

Offering both options to the user seems to me to be a reasonable option for those that prefer one approach or the other.

Regards,

Bill

[slawek-]

This is the answer that I got from IDM:

"Undo currently works character-by-character in UltraEdit-32 because it
was designed to do so (and this is the behavior Ian prefers). I don't
know what changes would be necessary to optionally support undo working
by whole words, but I will ask the developers to consider this for a
future release."


I have to say that character-by-character undo is not enough for me. I need to undo at least whole words with one undo - it's simply faster to work that way. Maybe an option will be a good solution.

slawek-

[BillStewart]

Hi slawek-,

Yes, this is the reason that most editors use "grouped undo" by default. Character-by-character undo is very tedious for a large number of undo steps.

--
Bill Stewart

[Koko_McCracken]

Hello,

I have nothing to say about char by char / grouped chars undo.

However, is there an option to "group " undo a macro?
I mean, when you execute a macro, and then try to undo it, you undo the macro step by step, and I find quite more interesting to undo the whole macro at once.

What do you think about that? Is there already a function like that?

[BillStewart]

Hi Koko_McCracken,

I think the fact that macros undo character-by-character is symptomatic of the program's design. It's quite bizarre to me that IDM actually prefers character-by-character undo, because it makes undoing lots of steps very tedious. IMHO, they really need to rethink this one.

Bill

[RhinoBanga]

While I agree that grouped undo's would be a great addition I find that I can often get by with ctrl-backspace which will delete a word.

[BillStewart]

All,

I am happy to report that UltraEdit 12.20 now supports word-based undo. (It's not quite the same as grouped undo, but IMHO, better than character-by-character undo and is a step in the right direction.)

Bill

[DigitalSorceress]

I gotta say this new word based undo is going to take a bit of getting used to... I would feel better about it if I could figure out how to disable it in case I don't like it.

I see an option in the advanced configuration under editor/advanced to allow for group undo, but toggling it does not appear to turn off the word-based undo.

Does anyone know how I could switch back to the old style of undo?