Idea: Moving sections 'Undoing changes' and 'Resurrecting deleted items'

[Max Bowsher]

C. Michael Pilato wrote:
> Ben Collins-Sussman wrote:
>
>> On Jun 3, 2005, at 4:20 AM, Erik Huelsmann wrote:
>>
>>> Hi!
>>>
>>> Reading the users mailing list, I think that the book would benefit
>>> from
>>> this change:
>>>
>>> Moving the sections 'Undoing changes' and 'Resurrecting deleted
>>> items' from
>>> the 'Branching and merging' chapter to the Guided Tour chapter in
>>> the 'Basic
>>> Workcycle' section.
>>
>> It's tricky:  should we really be telling people in the basic
>> tutorial, "oh by the way, to undo a change, run this merge command",
>> when they have no idea what 'svn merge' is?
>>
>> Maybe the best compromise is to create links in chapter 3 that point
>> to the chapter 4 sections...?
>
> I'm with Ben -- merge is a complex concept, and the complexity grows
> when you start talking about using that subcommand as a mechanism for
> the unworking of changes.  In fact, I don't think that any change is
> necessary at all -- we mustn't allow chapter 3 to become a table of
> contents for the rest of the book (that's what the Table of Contents is
> for).

Agree mostly, but "how do I undo..." is becoming a rather common question.

How about an additional section in "Ch3 -> Other Useful Commands", which 
just points out that undoing changes is actually a form of merging, and 
suggests that people not skip over chapter 4 just because they don't intend 
to work with branches at the moment?

I get the feeling that people simply aren't finding the existing Ch4 section 
on undoing changes, because they don't mentally associate it with branching 
or merging.

Max.