🚀 go-pugleaf

Sean, when you say that "I use tag (paragraph/character designer) settings for playing with my layout in the initial stages of document design", isn't this just an admission that you use a workround to get over the absence of multiple undo?    

Of course not. It's an admission that I use each tool to its strength. When I set up my templates, if I'm unsure about a look I create and apply multiple paragraph/character tags keeping the one I want and deleting the rest. It is more positive and accurate than multiple undo. Indeed, I'd do the same thing in Word if I could trust its styles. 

It works like this: Use tag A. Don't like it, click tag B. Don't like it, click tag C. Much more efficient, trackable, and positive than messing around with swiping styles and ctrl+Zing. 

Niels makes a good point; I am not arguing about history lists, which I find very useful in Photoshop and other such tools. Indeed, aside from Microsoft Word, I probably use undo more often in image editors--via a history tree action if I can--than anywhere else. However, I really don't run into those same needs in my publications, so don't have the same need even for history trees in FrameMaker. 

Really, I think the best benefit to multiple undo in a publishing or DTP application is to make up for deficiencies, bugs, and instabilities in the application itself, to erase unintended consequences of your actions more than anything else, such as unintended automatically-applied formatting in Word, unintended renumbering of lists in word, unintended moving of floating graphics in Word, etc. 

By using structure and tags, ctrl+Z becomes obsolete in the design of your FrameMaker documents. And, after your doc is designed, what would you do in FrameMaker that needs multiple undo? So you place the wrong imported image into a frame, you can delete and reimport as easily as you can undo it, and multiple undo is not needed anyway. If you apply the wrong tag to a character or paragraph, it is easier and more efficient to simply apply the correct tag than to use undo or multiple undo. Certainly, if you are mindlessly moving bits of text all over your document, multiple undo might be useful in getting back to an original condition; but, how useful is it? Really? It would be more useful, in Word, too, to save the original as a backup before playing. The chaotic nature of multiple undo means that in returning to your original condition after playing, you undo any changes you wanted to keep as well as those you wanted to discard. 

No, I'd say my use of tags instead of multiple undo in designing a document reflects an understanding of the usefulness and power of structured documentation and structured documentation tools. 

Cheers, 

Sean