Undo should reset view to impacted object or text

[MikeTO]

This is minor and can be worked around but it's not very Apple-like.

Undo works as expected in this case:

1. Type some text on a page

2. Scroll to a different page so that the first page is no longer visible

3. Choose Undo - the view snaps back to the first page

But in this case it doesn't work as expected:

1. Type some text on a page

2. Scroll to a different page so that the first page is no longer visible

3. Place the insertion point on the visible page.

4. Choose Undo 3 times. Affinity has a more powerful undo system and puts everything on the undo actions stack, even actions that don't impact the document. In Affinity you have to choose Undo three times (undo clear selection, undo set current page, undo insert). This is not a bug. But Affinity doesn't snap the view back to the first page when you choose Undo insert. I think this is a bug because you don't know what you've done.

A worst-case example is you're in a 100-page document and scroll back to an early page to make something consistent. You scroll back to the end and start work before realizing you should have typed something else back on whatever page you were on. In most other programs you could just choose Undo and the view would snap back and you could correct it, but in Affinity you have to find the page again. Minor but annoying.

[thomaso]

That's irritating me, too. It seems to be caused by inconsistencies in the Undo History, respectively with "set current page" / "set current selection", also influencing the modified state of an .afpub which seems to enable "Save" in a variable way.

Note in the video below a document can get opened with a selected object. This is a helpful feature by indicating the last object before the last Save action (e.g. day before). At that stage the history is empty and both Undo and Save are grayed-out.

When you now just select another object it gets an according history entry "set current selection". If this other object is on another page then "set current page" gets added before. The confusion seems to be related to the fact that not every "set current page" gets listed (but does only if you did an object change > selected an object). Accordingly not each "set current selection" gets listed, unless you also changed the current page before.

At the end of the video all possible undo options were done + the history is set to its first entry. But now "Save" is enabled – though it initially remained disabled even after some "set current …" actions + history entries. – In daily practice this kind of "Save" option is annoying because it prevents from closing Affinity without activating the app, for instance if you want to close the app via right-click menu on its dock icon. Instead it demands a save decision/button confirmation even if you haven't changed any layout object.

[garrettm30]

Just to contribute to the discussion, my preference is that only things that actually change the document should be candidates for the undo list. To me that would not include selection, although I can recognize the case that sometimes it might be nice to undo an accidental deselect after a spending time carefully making a selection. As for set current page, I don't see why that should ever be subject to undo. We might as well undo page scroll.

However, for my part my feelings are not strong on this; I only see it as a comparatively minor annoyance.

[MikeTO]

I don't want to turn this into a debate on how undo should work - there are valid reasons for supporting both methods of undo (a stack that includes or excludes actions that don't change the document). My point is only that Undo should show you what you're undoing like every other program does.

My reason for this is not just usability, although that is a real concern. Undo snapping the view back allows you to check something else without having to find where you were again. Make a change in the document (type a single character) and then go looking in your document for whatever you needed to check. Then to get back to where you were you choose Undo. I've been using this trick for decades and it was a rude awakening to find it didn't work in Affinity Publisher.