4 ms·
> 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"
by 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.