Operator name changes are not tracked by the Undo / Redo history if the text field is still active. This is quite frustrating and inconsistent with other text fields in the app.
That’s by design. OP name changes can propagate to the rest of the network if, for example, there are any OP references – so we avoid applying the name change until after the OP text field is no longer active (ie. the name change is finalized). You’ll notice if you have any references to an OP, when you change the OP name you’ll be prompted to update all references in the network.
It makes sense to only apply the name change to the network on deselection however the UX is still frustrating if you cannot undo changes made to the text field while editing. Making an accidental change to the op name happens a LOT when starting touchdesigner due to the questionable UX around activating and deactivating ops with the ‘a’ key and only allowing the text area of an op to be clickable when activated.
For reference, I teach Touchdesigner to around 40 students per year and almost every one of them finds this frustrating before the muscle memory of ctrl+drag selecting takes over.
Back to the undo/redo history: As a developer i understand you may only track network changes in the history state however from a user perspective a text field should behave like a normal text field. This might require an additional text history state for when text fields are active however this would lead to a less frustrating user experience over all.
1 Like
Separate questions as I was curious about this since I also teach quite often. Did you mean shift+drag for selecting with a box?
Also RMB-dragging does this box select which is what I usually teach/use.
Yeah, active viewers are clunky and I agree new users always struggle with it when starting.