GNU bug report logs - #31104
26.1; Undo limits

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From: Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>
To: Noam Postavsky <npostavs <at> gmail.com>
Cc: 31104 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Nick Helm <nick <at> tenpoint.co.nz>
Subject: bug#31104: 26.1; Undo limits
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2019 14:26:47 +0200

Noam Postavsky <npostavs <at> gmail.com> writes:

> tags 31104 + wontfix
> quit
>
> Nick Helm <nick <at> tenpoint.co.nz> writes:
>
>> I keep bumping into Emacs's undo limits.
>
>> I know I can change the undo-*-limit variables to improve this
>> situation, but I don't think users should have to do this.
>>
>> Bit of further navel-gazing...
>>
>> Simply raising the default undo limits (or advising users to raise it in
>> their config) has problems too. Given a large enough edit, I've had the
>> same issue reappear. I find it difficult to work out how an undo limit
>> set in bytes translates into real-world editing behaviour.
>>
>> Perhaps a byte size is not the best way to specify undo limits, at least
>> not for user-facing settings? Instead, could Emacs guarantee a minimum
>> number of undo steps, say the 20 most recent, regardless of the amount
>> of data it consumes?
>
> I don't see how Emacs can do better here (except maybe we should
> consider just bumping up the default limits so that users are less
> likely to hit them), since a single command can take an arbitrary amount
> of data, and there is only a finite amount of memory.

The last change here was in:

commit 2159bd065212117a6aff538a69d5ac1864dcd134
Author: Chong Yidong <cyd <at> stupidchicken.com>
Date:   Tue Jan 27 20:57:47 2009 +0000

    (undo_limit, undo_strong_limit, Vundo_outer_limit): Quadruple undo
    limits (bug#1501).

Since then, the current defaults are:

undo-limit         80000
undo-strong-limit  120000
undo-outer-limit   12000000

Maybe it's time to quadruple (or double) these numbers again?
Is there any reason not to do that for 27.1?

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

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