4 ms·

I realize that the editor would be the system to keep track of how the character was entered for this to work. If you made the character from a single keypress

I realize that the editor would be the system to keep track of how the character was entered for this to work. If you made the character from a single keypress it would only make sense that backspace also undid the entire character. Only if you created the character from multiple keypresses it would make sense to "undo" only part of it with backspace (at least until you move away from the character).

hunter2_ 3y ago
> make sense to "undo" only part of it with backspace I'm not sure that ever really makes sense: it would be a misnomer if "backspace" didn't bring you "back" some amount of horizontal "space," I reckon. This logic holds up not only for cases like ö and emoji (where I'd hope the whole grapheme disappears), but also for scenarios like if one types <f><i> and an <fi> ligature appears, where I'd hope only the <i> disappears: that's fine because you are still going back some space. If the key ever gets repurposed from "backspace" to "undo" then I would agree that it should step back to the previous state with as much granularity as possible.
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  “Backspace” is already a misnomer: the original intention was for it to move the caret one position back, the other way around from the usual space, thus enabling overstriking (whence also the characters _ ^ ` , unheard of before the typewriter age). You can still see this used by the troff|less internals of man, which encode underline and bold as _<BS>a and a<BS>a respectively.
extraduder_ire 3y ago
The text already contains the data about how the character was entered (more specifically, what codepoints it's made of), unless it has been normalized somehow. It seems like a tarpit to me to properly specify these behaviours in a way that won't be an annoyance/surprise to a lot of people.

4 ms·

I realize that the editor would be the system to keep track of how the character was entered for this to work. If you made the character from a single keypress

by riggsdk 3y ago

hunter2_ 3y ago
> make sense to "undo" only part of it with backspace I'm not sure that ever really makes sense: it would be a misnomer if "backspace" didn't bring you "back" some amount of horizontal "space," I reckon. This logic holds up not only for cases like ö and emoji (where I'd hope the whole grapheme disappears), but also for scenarios like if one types <f><i> and an <fi> ligature appears, where I'd hope only the <i> disappears: that's fine because you are still going back some space. If the key ever gets repurposed from "backspace" to "undo" then I would agree that it should step back to the previous state with as much granularity as possible.
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  “Backspace” is already a misnomer: the original intention was for it to move the caret one position back, the other way around from the usual space, thus enabling overstriking (whence also the characters _ ^ ` , unheard of before the typewriter age). You can still see this used by the troff|less internals of man, which encode underline and bold as _<BS>a and a<BS>a respectively.
extraduder_ire 3y ago
The text already contains the data about how the character was entered (more specifically, what codepoints it's made of), unless it has been normalized somehow. It seems like a tarpit to me to properly specify these behaviours in a way that won't be an annoyance/surprise to a lot of people.