[TxMt] [feature request] back & forward buttons / history steps

thomas Aylott thomas.42 at gmail.com
Mon Aug 22 05:03:19 UTC 2005


PROBLEM:
The feature of all mac apps that I use the most is search.  
Specifically find selection & find again. I use that feature to step  
through every instance of that selection throughout my code. One  
feature that I would love to see is a back button for selections.

Every time you do a search or scroll through your document & select  
something, to get back to the last thing you were working on you have  
to have set a bookmark & remember which bookmark you were last  
looking at, or you have to manually find that place in your code again.

I work on other peoples old janky ASP 'classic' and quickly slapped  
together ASP.NET code on a deadline. Anything to help me make quick  
work of navigating through the (massive mountain of fetid spaghetti)  
code the better.

SOLUTION:
If there was a way for the program to note every time you move the  
selection more than 'a little bit' & log that information  
sequentially, all you'd have to do to get back to what you were last  
looking at would be to hit the back button. bam bam... done, no  
thinking.

I know the system is extremely extensible, i'm sure there is some way  
for me to 'roll my own' system for doing something similar.
(1) I'd need a command to get the current input location row & column
(2) log that information somewhere
(3) a command to get the last input location from 'wherever' and then
(4) a command to set the input location to 'that location'

??? I think i could figure all this out with applescript and bbedit,  
but i'm still rather green when it comes to hard-core UNIX hacking.  
Anyone have any suggestions? ??

IDEA: Maybe a quickie version of it would be to undo the last edit,  
which would take me back to the last place I was, but then redo my  
last action without moving the input location so I don't lost any  
work. hmm...

Maybe there's another solution to my problems that i haven't  
considered. What does everyone else do?



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