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UNDO and Mathematica - how useless is it?

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  • Subject: [mg97898] UNDO and Mathematica - how useless is it?
  • From: Bob F <deepyogurt at gmail.com>
  • Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:42:48 -0500 (EST)

Hello Everyone,

Does anyone else think the UNDO menu function is about as useful as
ice in Antarctica?? I had just copied/pasted a long expression from a
web site to a notebook I was working on, but the expression had some
exponents/superscripts that did not come through with the paste so
what ended up being in the notebook was something like this:

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((x2*x)2*x)2)2*x)2*x)2*x)2)2)2*x)2*x)2)2*x)2)
2*x)2*x)2)2)2*x)2)2*x)2)2)2)2)2)2)2)2)2

so to Mathematica it looked like all the 2's were just multipliers
instead of exponents. No problem, says I, just highlight this string
and use the Edit/Find&Replace dialog box to change 2 to ^2, but only
one at a time was changed with each click of the replace. OK, says I,
use the "Replace All" and surely that will only apply to the
highlighted section. WRONG!!!!!! It changed the entire notebook to
have ^2 instead of every 2 in the entire notebook. OK, says I, just
click the Edit/Undo and get back to where I was. WRONG -- notebook is
totally hosed and I loose a few hours worth of work. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
I should have done a Save before doing the Replace All -- now I know
for next time.

So, hey Wolfram -- please fix the UNDO. Make it work like every other
program on the face of the planet, even the entire Solar System, even
the known and unknown universe!!!!!!!!!! Even one level of UNDO would
have saved me hours of working, let alone a multiple level UNDO like
you see in so many other programs.

I would be much happier Mathematica user, if Wolfram would spend time
in solving problems like this, than coming out with new versions with
hundred of functions. Please make the next release fix some of the
major outstanding issues with the current version (and for many years
as far as I can tell)!!! If you want to add new functionality that's
great, but give users a modern user interface feature like
UNDO!!!!!!!!!!!

And as long as you're about it, give the Find dialog box a way to do a
find/replace on a cell or multiple cells or any highlighted section of
a notebook. As it stands right now, you have to click the Replace
button for each and every occurrence of the string you wish to change.
Maybe a "Replace in this cell" or "Replace in the highlighted section"
button.

How can something so simple (the UNDO) be so uselessly implemented.
What is it even good for in the state that it is in??

-Bob (grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr) ;-(


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