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

[Lex Trotman]

On 25 June 2015 at 06:54, Thomas Martitz <kugel at rockbox.org> wrote:
> 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.

Welcome to a new paradigm :)

>
>>> 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

Most [1] other editors call this command "revert" and they clear the
edit history, that makes sense, they are "reverting" the buffer to its
initial state.  So they have prompts.

Geany is just reloading the file contents as another editing action.

> 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.

Since Geany is clearly ahead of the pack here maybe we *should* have a a dialog:

  Did you know that reloading is just another editing action and can
be undone like all the rest?

  It is not like other editors crappy destructive "revert" commands.

  [ ] Don't show again

  This advertisement is brought to you by the Geany team to emphasise
its awesomeness.

:)

Cheers
Lex

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

[1]: "Most" on my system consists of gedit and emacs, but I had a
quick look at the doco for a few others.

>
> Best regards.
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