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JuliaDawkins

Add 'undo' for VIEW

Having 'undo' in REPORT is great, and would be just as great in VIEW!  Removing and adding channels from a 2D axis would be my favorite use of an "undo" function. 

14 Comments
Brad_Turpin
Trusted Enthusiast

Hey Julia,

 

Again, this is another feature that's been on my personal wish list for multiple DIAdem versions now.  I'd also add more than 10 steps of REPORT undo and Redo for both REPORT and VIEW to round out the request.  The hair in the soup with VIEW undo-ing is that VIEW supports both configuration steps and data manipulation steps.  Let's say you surround a region of interest with the band cursors and the select the button to delete that data range... that could be hundreds of megabytes of data you just deleted.  We can't make that undo-able.  Of course the obvious response there is to pop up a warning dialog stating the "following action cannot be undone".  But it makes R&D nervous to contemplate an Undo in VIEW that works for some actions in VIEW and not for others.  We still get complaints about the VBScript recorder not recording steps that should be stored in a TDV or TDR file, and this would be a similar situation.  Still, the list of actions in VIEW that we could store Undo for is mighty long, and the demarkation is pretty clear-- "everything except data changing actions".

 

This is a feature that I fully and enthusiastically support but R&D has not yet embraced.  I'll keep lobbying from my end, and maybe the list of Kudos to this request will make a difference.

 

Brad Turpin

DIAdem Product Support Engineer
National Instruments

JuliaDawkins
Member

I would much prefer to have some limited undo functionality (for the steps that make sense/are possible) than none at all!  The lack of undo is one of the most frequent questions at our new user training classes.

Otmar
Active Participant
Status changed to: Under Consideration
 
Otmar D. Foehner
piggieq
Member

Kudos to this suggestion. I get funny look from my class every time I mention to them "undo is not supported and be careful what you do."

JuliaDawkins
Member

Hooray! 

MarredCheese
Member

It's pretty surprising to see software created this century that doesn't have undo and redo. It's nearly a deal breaker, to be honest. DIAdem marketing videos like to rag on Excel, but you know what program has both undo and redo, everywhere, all the time? Excel.

 

Snarky comments aside, I don't think that the possibility of lower performance on large files is a valid excuse. Like you mentioned, Brad, you can always make actions that will impact performance optional. You could have a simple pop up asking if you'd like the deleted curve section to be saved to disk despite the memory cost. No big deal, right?

 

Currently in DIAdem, you have to be very careful not to overwrite data you might need to go back to. And what does that mean? Creating new channels. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that backing up a small deleted curve section doesn't sound like such a big deal when compared to the much larger amount of memory required to copy the entire channel instead.

 

For inspiration, you could look to other programs that manage extremely large amounts of data yet still have extensive undo capabilities, such as Adobe Lightroom. I have hundreds of gigabytes of photos on my computer, many of which have tens or hundreds of complex retouching operations. Yet every single one of those photos has a full, persistent history of everything I have ever done to it on any date, and I can just click any point in that history to go back to it. There is literally no way to lose information. Not only that, but no matter how much editing I do, I never have to create copies of my photos to protect them from future edits, which keeps the hard drive footprint low.

 

The way it does this is by never touching the actual photo files themselves. Instead, it records the list of edits you've made, and when appropriate, it uses those that list to render an image. You can render all your photos beforehand, if you care more about speed than hard drive space, or you can render them on demand.

 

I assume it would involve a pretty big programming overhaul, but couldn't DIAdem do the same kind of thing? When a user deletes a curve section, it could leave the data in the file, but make a note that certain regions should evaluate to NOVALUE in future analysis and viewing. That costs nothing in terms of memory. Sure, performance might be a little slower for really big data sets, but so what? If that's your concern, then give the option to pre-calculate and save to disk, like how Lightroom can pre-render pictures. Or make it an optional feature altogether. Give the user the power to decide his or her priorities. He or she is completely capable of deciding whether to delete the data permanently or not. That way, those who are using DIAdem on small data sets don't have to suffer because of those who are using it on large data sets, and vice versa.

 

An added benefit to this approach would be that DIAdem would have a record of everything that had been done to the data, which would be great. I'm a new user so I might be wrong, but I believe the only way to create a history of what you have done that persists beyond a single DIAdem session is to record a script. It works, but depends on the user remembering to hit record, feels like a work-around, and certainly doesn't give you the power to revert to a past state.

 

Sorry this got long. I hope it helps.

PRinOR
Member

Please also add UNDO to the ANALYSIS page.

 

Data can be accidentally written over in the ANALYSIS page. For example, this can occur if the "store result in original channel" box is selected either because it was engaged the last time a particular function was used and did not get "unchecked" or the button is simply accidentally engaged. It is also possible to inadvertently write over channels when using the calculator, with no way of recovery (unless said channel was previously saved).

 

UNDO is really important in data analysis work flow because it allows the user to experiment without worrying that they will lose work. The lack of UNDO in DIAdem (except Report) is a reason I turn to EXCEL for analysis more often than I otherwise would.

K.Yamashita
NI Employee (retired)

In addition to VIEW and ANALYSIS as has already been suggested, we should also definitely have "undo" functionality in the DAC and VISUAL tabs as well, for those using DIAdem DAC.  It can be disastrous when you have configured and fine-tuned a function block and then accidentally delete it.  Let's keep the Kudos going for this post.

jtagg
Active Participant

One thing undo would be really nice for is zooming. It would be nice to be able to go back to the previous zoom and this may be something that makes sense to undo.

louval
Member
I support all of these comments Louval