[PATCH] histedit: make actions toggleables

[Anton Shestakov]

On Fri, 10 May 2019 10:15:31 -0700
Yu Feng <rainwoodman at gmail.com> wrote:

> # HG changeset patch
> # User feyu at google.com
> # Date 1557508115 25200
> #      Fri May 10 10:08:35 2019 -0700
> # Node ID 23bc04dc2d149829133db571f6a922e95843c9f9
> # Parent  458dc948aff9f1217718b7679f890fea510d54f7
> histedit: make actions toggleables.
> 
> If the same action is applied twice, revert to pick.
> 
> For example, the current state
> #0  pick   104:xxxxxxxxx   Collect progress
> 
> pressing e once
> #0  edit   104:xxxxxxxxx   Collect progress
> 
> pressing e again toggles it back to pick.
> Instead of keeping at e (behavior before this patch)
> #0  pick   104:xxxxxxxxx   Collect progress
> 
> The rationale is that giving a response when a key is pressed
> makes happy users. Toggling seems to be a reasonable response in
> this scenario.

This rationale may be good for GUI, but text-based interfaces don't
traditionally react to every possible key press. And one way to see
this patch is that it makes histedit do pretty much the opposite to what
it's told to do: I press e and it goes back to "pick". That's
surprising because action field is not a toggle, it's a choice.

Also, users don't have to change histedit plan in one go, they can
leave it waiting for input for days on end, or open another window to
see the graph and mentally think up the list of actions to mechanically
punch it in on the keyboard without looking at the current state of
histedit plan. If they know that commits A+B+C need to be edited, it
makes sense to let them press (e, down)x3 on A without making sure that
any of the actions wasn't already on "edit" because of their previous
input.

This could be a config option, that would make people knowingly opt-in
and not be surprised by the behavior.