[Geany-Devel] f403e7e (PR#188) - Maintain edit history on document reload

[Thomas Martitz]

Am 24.06.2015 um 22:26 schrieb Lex Trotman:
> I'm struggling to understand why there is any confusion, reload is an 
> editing action just like any other and can be undone like any other. 
> Seems much safer to me and exactly what to expect. It used to have a 
> side effect that was unexpected and nasty which was why it had a 
> dialog warning of that, now it doesn't, so its just like any other 
> command. 

To me, reloading the file from disk is clearly not like any other 
editing command. It's got more to do with file management than editing, 
and given the previous behavior it's easy to be confused as an existing 
user. I also don't think any other editor out there works like this so I 
can see it being unexpected for new users as well.

>> I haven't looked at the code. Is the diff of the buffer and the file applied
>> and recorded as an ordinary undo action?
> Thats up to Scintilla how it records the reload.

I was wondering if we do anything special to support this. I guess not.

> Indeed long time users who are used to the old wrong behaviour need to 
> unlearn the wrong one. But that doesn't mean we should prompt every 
> time we do it right.


Some kind of help/guidance for users who do not expect the new behavior 
(either because are existing users or coming from other editors[1]) 
would be nice, if possible. And since it seems really unique across 
editors (and consequently potentially unexpected) some kind of 
introduction to the feature would be really helpful. I, for one, got 
really trapped. I'd say the dialog I proposed can accomplish that, while 
maintaining the ability to never have the prompt again.

[1]: gedit does it similarly to what we previously did.

Best regards.