Undo button closes Edit window

[littlespaceman]

I have been frustrated and puzzled by this ever since I got the QC 2 years ago - the way that if you are editing a parameter in a block, and press undo, it actually closes the Edit window and returns you to the Grid.

This bothers me so much - as it seems so crazily illogical - that I contacted Neural, with the following email;

"Neural, please, please, please can you address the issue where the ‘Undo’ function, while in the block edit window, closes that window and takes you back to the Grid?

This is fantastically annoying - every time you try to undo an edit of a parameter (say overdrive gain) the edit window that shows you what the gain setting is actually CLOSES when you press Undo, and so if you are pressing Undo multiple times, you have no idea what step you have reverted back to.

I can see no logical reason why this is implemented this way, and addressing this would significantly improve the Quad Cortex user-experience."

[littlespaceman]

As I have often found when dealing with Neural, it can take multiple communications to understand something from there point of view; in this case I received a reply saying that closing the Edit window was the intended response when you press the Undo button.

In response I sent this;

"To my mind it is flawed logic that the first press of the Undo button takes me back to the Grid; why would I need the Undo button to do this? There is already a button I can press to go back to the Grid (the tick box, highlighted below)

Surely the Undo button is there to undo any PARAMETER changes while remaining in the edit window, especially multiple changes, so you can see what changes you are making and ‘audition’ them before cancelling or saving them as desired?

Say for example I want to experiment with different levels of overdrive Gain; I go from 3.0 to 4.5, then try increasing it to 5.3, then to 6.1.
I then want to go back to some of the lower levels of Gain to compare those to the higher ones; Great, there is an Undo feature! But when I press this it closes the edit window, so I have absolutely no idea what Gain setting I’m on anymore.

I really do not understand the logic of having the first press of the Undo button be to take me back to the Grid; if you think about it, this is actually flawed, because the Undo function is there to undo steps in reverse order, yet if pressing it always takes me back to the Grid first, then it is not following this protocol.

So for example,

1. I go from the Grid to the Edit window
2. I change a parameter
3. I change a parameter again
4. I change a parameter again etc
5. I press the Undo button
6. This takes me back to the Grid, which is actually jumping all the way back to Step 1, and not taking me one step back to Step 5.

It would be much more useful to have the Undo button do what it actually says, and Undo each step, in reverse order, one at a time; and then, only when it has gone step by step back to Step 2, should the next step take me back to the Grid."

[littlespaceman]

Neural’s reply to this was

“Because you are not really tapping “undo” with the first tap. Tapping anywhere above the parameter editor will show the grid. A second tap on any control is needed to trigger an action”

Which gave me a lightbulb moment - all these years, I’ve been pressing the Undo button when an Edit window was open thinking that the button would undo any parameter changes I had made (which is what happens in the Headrush and Line 6 universes I think?)

I now realise however that I had fallen foul if somethng extremely confusing ij the user interface; when you edit a block on Row 1, the Undo button is indeed visible, leading me to think it was there to undo parameter changes;

o

I now understand that this is only there by coincidence, and actually it isn’t there to be used in the Edit window at all; in fact it’s on the Grid, even though you can still see it, and tapping ANYWHERE outside the Edit window returns you to the Grid. In my case I happened to be tapping on the Undo arrow, thinking it was part of the Edit window functionality.

I also now see that if you have the Edit window open for a Block on Row 3, you don’t see the Undo arrow, as it is too far to the top of the screen;

This is all well and good, and I’m glad I now understand this, but it is yet another example of the UI being at times somewhat un-intuitive, and I still don’t really understand that the point of the Undo button is, if it is only available on the Grid, other than to jump to previously selected Presets, or undo effects chain order changes.

To make things more confusing, Neural also told me this;

"On Quad Cortex, the UNDO/REDO controls are on the grid itself, so accessing them requires closing the currently open parameter editor. On the other hand, Undo/Redo changes while parameter editors are open is possible on the Cortex Control app. Going even further, there are keyboard shortcuts assigned to undo/redo (cmd/ctrl + z & shift+cmd/ctrl+Z)."

This is of course correct, in Cortex Control, it does work the way I had thought all along it worked on the QC itself - which is great, but begs the question why would CC be different from the QC, and why, why, would you use the same icon for something that actually behaves differently??

Anyway, the net result is that I think it still needs addressing on the QC, and I have set up a feature request to bring the way the Undo works on the QC in line with the (correct way, imho!) it works in Cortex Control

I know some of you are also confused by this, so hopefully this helps clarify things for you too!