Add an option: Undo/Redo Does Not Select/Unselect

Today I saw a wonderful option in WaveLab Pro 11 -
image
Do you see? It is possible to control Undo/Redo stack. I agree it will take 2 or more years, but it’s possible! :smiley:

So, please add Undo/Redo Does Not Select/Unselect option in Dorico, because on huge and rapid editing process I (and I think I’m not alone again) should do Ctrl+Z some 20 times to get one note back, because I played, scrolled, selected many other notes to see what’s good and what’s bad.

Of course, many editing tasks need to have huge number of notes selected, so to achieve best result I think there could be option like “Ignore Select/Unselect in Undo Stack”. Why this? Because then we can work as usual with undoing selection, but when needed, just press keycommand to switch this option on, ignore selection changes, undoing operation we need to undo, then switch that option to its previous state. Of course, if something undone that interfere selection tasks, those tasks cannot be redoable.

Huh! I don’t expect that someone understand me, but at least title is quite short and with no errors!
Have a nice weekend to all mates here!

6 Likes

Seconded. I’d love to have the option for undo/redo to pertain only to actions that affected the content of the score and how it’s rendered (visually or aurally), not the interface (selections, views, etc.).

I guess it’s still problematic, though…

3 Likes

This has been requested before. It’s not something we’re philosophically opposed to, but it’s not something we’re likely to tackle as a matter of high priority.

I agree that it could not be a priority, but I cannot imagine who were asking to include selection operations into Undo/Redo list. Was it a joke or just caused by Spring thunderstorms?

From which software this behavior was copied? Sibelius or other? No other Steinberg software put selection into Undo stack.

And it has so little priority for WaveLab team that they just added similar option just to fit in wide range of needs.

The current system works just fine for me. It comes in quite handy, at times. I’ve bumped my mouse, for instance, after having done some filter operation and lost my selection. A quick undo reselects everything.

2 Likes

And this is why other 50% of users should feel pain?
That’s why I’m asking for an option that can be switched with key combination. I agree that for some manipulations if you lose selection, it is nice to have selection back. For this the Undo works perfectly. But imagine you change some notes, let’s say move them up for an octave, then you click anywhere in project, select some other notes, played from that position, select other notes, play again, then decide that the modification (move some notes octave up) was wrong and want to undo that move. How much undo steps you will go? 10? 20? But if there would be this option that omits selection operations, then you hit Undo only once and have notes back to their position.
I hope you understand.
I wonder why one should explain self-explanatory things.

Hi. I understand why you want that option, and I think it could be convenient, as things stand now.
For those of us who have started with Dorico 1, it was really important to be able to undo selection(s) because there were no filterings, no system track, marquee selection and cmd-click were the tools… Since Dorico has tremendously grown up since then, undoing selection is probably less important now than it was by then!

2 Likes

Frankly, you get rather hyperbolic on this forum. “You couldn’t imagine…” so, I mentioned a use case where the current design is a positive. You prefer something different. Congratulations. I did not speak against offering the option to change the behavior, I merely spoke to the fact that the current behavior is not all bad.

I, too, wonder why one should explain self-explanatory things.

7 Likes

I think the idea is nice, and maybe there’s an even easier solution:

Cmd-Z: undo
Cmd-alt-Z: undo (ignore selections).

(Or vice versa but I think it’s best mit to change current behaviors if possible)

Photoshop had for some time cmd-Z as a shortcut to quickly compare the last state with the current (as a toggle), and used cmd-alt-Z as a real undo. It was quite annoying, as they deferred from common practice.

4 Likes

Yeah, I know - this statement is everywhere - new abnormal becomes normal only because it’s new (and this isn’t the synonym of “good”). Not only on software development, but on everything. So oldschool is crap. Congratulations!

Let’s users decide themselves what and which key combinations works better, but from developers we could receive more flexibility.
I’ve searched about Undo any information - nothing except “This can be extremely useful when making complex or detailed selections and a mistake is made” mentioned by @Anthony_at_Steinberg in a video of series #TipsTuesday. But just only few users stated that “This can be extremely annoying when making simple and quick job” and the music and the muse is so intuitive and intimate that every single encumbrance can prevent it to come. Why only few? Because many people knows that nothing will be changed because “new abnormal becomes normal” because no one is fighting against and only few idiots (like me) are spending time to ask for oldschoolish things.

I’m curious why you classify the current behavior as “abnormal”. Other programs I use also reselect objects as a part of the undo-sequence. In fact, pretty much every program I use on a daily basis does a literal inversion of whatever the sequence of events was that preceded the undo command(s). It would seem that the current behavior is indeed normative. Would it not be more confusing to have an undo sequence that selectively ignored certain things and not others?

2 Likes

Because you are not all.
No other program I use on a daily basis take selection in count when Undo/Redo processed.
It seems that you don’t use Cubase and WaveLab. There Undo/Redo do behave correct or oldschool :wink:

Arthur, again, I simply posed a genuine question. You are making the claim that Dorico’s approach is somehow abnormal; this is not my experience (Affinity Publisher, which I use every day, is just like Dorico and will re-select objects, for instance) so I asked how Dorico’s behavior is “abnormal”. I’ve never claimed to be the arbiter of truth or to speak for the development team, and ad hominem comments are hardly constructive to good dialogue :wink:

Whether or not something in software is “correct” seems a more difficult argument to make. de gustibus and all that. It is fair to say, “I prefer the current behavior of Cubase and Wavelab which behave this other way. Could we have an option for that?” Railing against the team for doing it ‘wrongly’ is another matter entirely, as I’ve demonstrated that other software does indeed behave similarly. But I digress. You’ve made your point, and I’ve made mine. Have a good day.

2 Likes

So what? I use Adobe InDesign if that matters. Ah, yes, it is too old to take in count, right?

Let me explain my statements of “normal” and “abnormal”. For me everything that works is great. Something new should be approved by quorum before it becomes a standard. Otherwise, it should be an option that can be selected or disabled.

So to avoid current Undo/Redo behavior, I still compose in Cubase, then write the same notes in Dorico just to have them nice on paper. I cannot compose in Dorico but could do that for faster result.

The abnormality is that the new approach is to fight against old school without any acceptance, just because old is old and is going to the graveyard.

Old programmers are not taken in count, because they are old, but new programmers (oh, they call so themselves because of using libraries made by others) are new and just need to do everything differently, because old schoolers were annoying for years.

In Dorico’s Preferences under Note Input and Editing>Editing, there is an option “Follow selection changes on undo and redo.” However, unchecking this option does not seem to do what Arthur wants. I can’t find any documentation on this option, and a Google search only found two previous forum posts which mention this option.

In this case “follow” means scroll to show where the last action occurred.

Thanks for the clarification.

I would really like to see that undo/redo only works on the real changes in a project and not on the selection.
With all the other software that I use as a sound engineer, undo/redo is really only for edits and certainly not for selection.
For me, Dorico is the exception and I find this very annoying and can’t get used to it.

Groet, Marien

3 Likes

Revert to saved would also be nice

1 Like