How does Robohelp "undo" work?

Report · Jan 13, 2020

When I save a document I do not expect to be able to undo formatting changes. However I can do that in RoboHelp 2019. And "undo" does not undo just the last piece of formatting - no it takes away a long solid chunk of formatting and sets the document back to the state of last save.

It seems illogical and out of sync with all other software. Is there a system to this and can I modify it somehow?

Bjørn Smalbro - FrameMaker.dk

Report · Jan 13, 2020

I observed this too. I believe it is a bug - and logged bug RH-6367 in response.

In the meantime, I've stopped rolling back/undoing changes.

Report · Jan 13, 2020

Thank you, and thank you for logging it. It seems to me, that RoboHelp somehow does not manage memory correctly. Changes and edits "stack up", and eventually the program becomes unstable and slow and one has to restart the program. My experience-wise, that is 🙂

Bjørn Smalbro - FrameMaker.dk

Report · Jan 13, 2020

You can vote for the bug here:

https://tracker.adobe.com/

Report · Jan 13, 2020

Pretty sure it's Undo per session which I have seen elsewhere. It can be useful as long as you are aware.

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Report · Jan 14, 2020

well... something IS wrong. I have been working on this RoboHelp project the last week now. And this just happened: I have a document with a large table and saves and closes the document regularly. I copied a wrong text into a cell. Hit undo and an entire earlier version of the document appears. A version several "Saves" ago. Weird.

Bjørn Smalbro - FrameMaker.dk

Report · Jan 16, 2020

Hi,

this is exactly what I experienced the week after the Update 10 of RoboHelp has been released. Used up all my best swear words then...

Before that, everything was fine with the usual way of undoing/redoing things. And I also set up a bug report for it: https://tracker.adobe.com/#/view/RH-6292

With Update 10, there's the new feature of autosaving your current work.

Seems to me that this feature may be connected to this odd behaviour of Undo/Redo since the update.

Report · Jan 20, 2020

Yes, I have this as well. It makes the undo function completely unusable, and even dangerous. Because, do you know exactly what you changed since the undo version RH went back to? Or what it redid when you hit ctrl-y? It's fine and probably useful if there's some "go back one session" function in a separate command, but not under the ctrl-z button.

I'm not using it anymore, and suffer the consequences when I hit ctrl-z occasionally (as you do) after heavily editing a topic.

This brought me back to the save often (like, after every single edit), and backup often (like, every 5 minutes) routine I was used to a few decades ago. 🙂

In the mean time until this is fixed, is there a way to disable the ctrl-z button entirely (maybe in Windows itself)?

Report · Jan 14, 2020

I'd suggest that the more common practice in the software world (and thus, expectation) is that undo/redo functions perform per edit, not per session. In fact, this is how they function in RH2017. Additionally, even if the RH2019 undo function is designed "per session", the redo function does not "redo" all "per session" changes after un-doing all such changes. I've lost hours of work due to this issue, as a result. For now, I've trained myself to avoid the undo/redo functions. Hoping Adobe agrees with my view of the issue and resolves it in the next update.

Report · Jan 17, 2020

I now have access to a RoboHelp machine again and the undo/redo is not per session. It is while that topic remains open. Close a topic and reopen it and the undo/redo function no longer operates on the previous changes. It is thus quite easy to force it to work the old way.

SnagIt also works that way and I have been grateful for it on more than one occasion. Perhaps a user setting to allow either way of working would keep us all happy.

StudioSM.

You say

I have been working on this RoboHelp project the last week now. And this just happened: I have a document with a large table and saves and closes the document regularly. I copied a wrong text into a cell. Hit undo and an entire earlier version of the document appears. A version several "Saves" ago.

Is that something you can replicate as that definitely isn't OK.

www.grainge.org

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Report · Jan 20, 2020

The bug tracker now shows "This issue has been resolved and shall be made available early next week. We are sorry for the trouble."

While I feel like I'm a bit of a beta tester with the new UI, I'm impressed by the resolve and quick responses of Adobe when something is wrong. Kudos to them, it makes me stick to the new UI regardless of the inconveniences.

Report · Jan 20, 2020

So the issue is not so much that it goes beyond the last Save but even before you Save, you could be undoing things you didn't mean to because you don't get taken to its location. Correct?

If the screen jumped to the location each time you clicked Undo/Redo during the time the topic is open, would that work for everyone?

In Word if you type something on say Page 2, then go to the top of Page 1 and click CTRL Z, you get taken back to the location on Page 2 where you made the change.

I know Word does not go beyond the last Save but I'm not seeing that as the problem, rather not knowing what is being undone/redone is the dangerous bit. Agree/disagree?

www.grainge.org

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Report · Jan 20, 2020

One of the reasons for the change is that a new tool is being used to develop RoboHelp and changes that took weeks before now take days or even hours.

www.grainge.org

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Report · Jan 20, 2020

@Peter

Functionally, it would be very unusual if ctrl-z not just undid the very last typing action but a whole session. Undoing a session should be a very deliberate action that's done either with the menu or with a complicated shortcut like cltrl-alt-shift-z. I'm fine with the function being available, but not as regular undo.

In this case, the bug is that also the redo doesn't work. It doesn't redo everything it undid. I haven't tested this extensively but I think it only redoes the last edit and leaves alone all the other stuff it undid to go back to the last session. This makes it impossible to determine exactly what it redid which leaves your topic in such a mess that the only sensible option is to close without saving and open the topic again. Which can lose hours of work if you depended on autosave for hours. And that's only if it just undid the session of the topic you had open. I have no idea what it did to my other topics, if anything. I have seen content in other topics randomly disappear, which I needed to copy over again from previously compiled versions. No idea if that had to do with this bug or with myself, but it feels a bit discomforting.

I think RH already goes back to the location it redoes something (at least I can't remember anything strange in that regard before 0.10). However, if it would redo a whole session going back to multiple locations in the same topic simultaneously would be impossible. 🙂

Report · Jan 20, 2020

Excactly

Bjørn Smalbro - FrameMaker.dk

Report · Jan 20, 2020

The functionality to my mind should be this.

Undo only works on topics that are open. I think that is the case.
A single click should work on the last operation only with a further click required to go to the previous change.
It should take the user to the location of the change, be that the current topic or another open topic OR work as Word does, only on the topic in focus.
If there is to be an Undo All option, it should be a separate icon. Personally I would close the topic and not click Save.
The undo/redo cycle would work in the same way as Word where it is based on the order of the operations.

In your case it does sound as if what you have experienced is beyond how any undo/redo should work. What I am trying to do is establish how we would like it to work.

www.grainge.org

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Report · Feb 04, 2020

Is the fix already available? It's now 2 weeks since they announced it to be available "early next week" 🙂 I'm getting better at refraining myself from pressing ctrl-z, but it stays very annoying nevertheless.

Report · Feb 04, 2020

Hi,

Some more issues came up which we felt were must fix for update 11 and that delayed the release. It has already been marked GM now and is in the process of being made available. It should be live in next 24 hours.

Thanks,

Vivek