Cancelling document properties undoes applied values (9.9.3)

[gurok]

This seems to happen with any value in the Properties window, but it's very obvious if you pick something visible.

1. Open the properties window of a document
2. On the Colors tab, change the window background to red
3. Click Apply
4. Click Cancel and see that the background colour is reverted

As far as I can tell, this is unique to the Properties window. Other dialogues like Preferences and Page Setup have standard behaviour for the Apply button.

[gurok]

OK, this is a strange one. Maybe I dreamt it, but I think I once saw a reply to this message and it disappeared.

Is this cancel behaviour indeed a bug and will it be fixed?

[bbadmin]

This behavior is by design. It's so that you can see the effect of changes to a document by clicking Apply, and undoing those changes by clicking Cancel, if you don't like them.

Note that changes to document properties are only persistent for documents saved in a workspace.

[AmigoJack]

While this makes sense in that particular case I expect a dialog window always the behavior that the "Ok" button acts as a shortcut to pressing the "Apply" button to save changes and the "Cancel" button to close the window.

Couldn't the "Cancel" button be renamed to "Revert" after the "Apply" button has been pressed? In a consistent world a dialog window should more correctly have a "Close" button first, which is then renamed to "Cancel" once any change has been made, tho.

[bbadmin]

While I agree with your excellent suggestions, TextPad has behaved this way for at least a quarter of a century, and this specific behavior has only been questioned once, so making it more intuitive will not be given the highest priority.

[gurok]

While I agree with your excellent suggestions, TextPad has behaved this way for at least a quarter of a century, and this specific behavior has only been questioned once, so making it more intuitive will not be given the highest priority.

No worries. Now I understand it's intentional.

In that case, on new, unsaved documents the Cancel button in the Properties window does NOT undo applied changes. I guess that might be the bug.

By the way, I know I've been on a bit of a spree reporting things. Some of them are long-standing and I've just got around to creating test cases and reporting them. I just want to reiterate that I love the software and so do many of us here, even though you don't hear it among the numerous complaints on this board. Thank you for being one of the few software companies out there that listen and provide feedback, rather than canned replies or silence.

Couldn't the "Cancel" button be renamed to "Revert" after the "Apply" button has been pressed?

Renaming "Apply" to "Preview" is what sprang to mind for me, as that would match the design in some image editors when you apply an effect. I think for a Properties window, it's a bit of a strained metaphor though. Honestly, I can't argue against bbadmin's reasoning either. If it's gone a quarter of a century unnoticed, I think my suggestion and AmigoJack's both might be less understandable than just having a quirk to how the Apply button behaves.