Undo Reinterpreted (2003)
article⁄Undo Reinterpreted (2003)
abstract⁄The class of operations known as ‘undo’ has proven to be a valuable addition to most professional work tools. In practice though, its use is frustrating undo often undoes too much. Its essential informal semantics are that it returns the user to a prior state by recapitulating all intervening states. Why not give the user greater control over which aspects of a design to undo An alternative is to seek to reuse prior work in any logicallycoherent patternuser input is a precious commodity. The area of generative systems provides insights in a search for alternatives to undo, in particular that prior user and system actions can be changed and reused in new contexts. We contingently introduce a concept we label as design promotions to describe system designs that demonstrate a tight coupling between interactive authorship and systemled generation, that treat past user actions as valuable intentional statements, and that treat alternative user choices as firstclass objects of concern. In practice these three properties emphasize reuse. We briefly survey the current state of undolike operations and potential candidates for implementing design promotions strategies. Through examples, we demonstrate approaches to realizing undolike operations over specific representations, especially that of constructive solid geometry.
