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- ;;; undo-stack.el --- An "undoable stack" object.
- ;; Keywords: extensions
-
- ;; Copyright (C) 1996 Ben Wing.
-
- ;; This file is part of XEmacs.
-
- ;; XEmacs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
- ;; under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
- ;; the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
- ;; any later version.
-
- ;; XEmacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
- ;; WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
- ;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
- ;; General Public License for more details.
-
- ;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
- ;; along with XEmacs; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the
- ;; Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
- ;; Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
-
- ;;; Synched up with: Not in FSF.
-
- ;;; Commentary:
-
- ;;; An "undoable stack" is an object that can be used to implement
- ;;; a history of positions, with undo and redo. Conceptually, it
- ;;; is the kind of data structure used to keep track of (e.g.)
- ;;; visited Web pages, so that the "Back" and "Forward" operations
- ;;; in the browser work. Basically, I can successively visit a
- ;;; number of Web pages through links, and then hit "Back" a
- ;;; few times to go to previous positions, and then "Forward" a
- ;;; few times to reverse this process. This is similar to an
- ;;; "undo" and "redo" mechanism.
- ;;;
- ;;; Note that Emacs does not standardly contain structures like
- ;;; this. Instead, it implements history using either a ring
- ;;; (the kill ring, the mark ring), or something like the undo
- ;;; stack, where successive "undo" operations get recorded as
- ;;; normal modifications, so that if you do a bunch of successive
- ;;; undo's, then something else, then start undoing, you will
- ;;; be redoing all your undo's back to the point before you did
- ;;; the undo's, and then further undo's will act like the previous
- ;;; round of undo's. I think that both of these paradigms are
- ;;; inferior to the "undoable-stack" paradigm because they're
- ;;; confusing and difficult to keep track of.
- ;;;
- ;;; Conceptually, imagine a position history like this:
- ;;;
- ;;; 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6
- ;;; ^^
- ;;;
- ;;; where the arrow indicates where you currently are. "Going back"
- ;;; and "going forward" just amount to moving the arrow. However,
- ;;; what happens if the history state is this:
- ;;;
- ;;; 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6
- ;;; ^^
- ;;;
- ;;; and then I visit new positions (7) and (8)? In the most general
- ;;; implementation, you've just caused a new branch like this:
- ;;;
- ;;; 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6
- ;;; |
- ;;; |
- ;;; 7 -> 8
- ;;; ^^
- ;;;
- ;;; But then you can end up with a whole big tree, and you need
- ;;; more sophisticated ways of navigating ("Forward" might involve
- ;;; a choice of paths to follow) and managing its size (if you don't
- ;;; want to keep unlimited history, you have to truncate at some point,
- ;;; and how do you truncate a tree?)
- ;;;
- ;;; My solution to this is just to insert the new positions like
- ;;; this:
- ;;;
- ;;; 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 7 -> 8 -> 5 -> 6
- ;;; ^^
- ;;;
- ;;; (Netscape, I think, would just truncate 5 and 6 completely,
- ;;; but that seems a bit drastic. In the Emacs-standard "ring"
- ;;; structure, this problem is avoided by simply moving 5 and 6
- ;;; to the beginning of the ring. However, it doesn't seem
- ;;; logical to me to have "going back past 1" get you to 6.)
- ;;;
- ;;; Now what if we have a "maximum" size of (say) 7 elements?
- ;;; When we add 8, we could truncate either 1 or 6. Since 5 and
- ;;; 6 are "undone" positions, we should presumably truncate
- ;;; them before 1. So, adding 8 truncates 6, adding 9 truncates
- ;;; 5, and adding 10 truncates 1 because there is nothing more
- ;;; that is forward of the insertion point.
- ;;;
- ;;; Interestingly, this method of truncation is almost like
- ;;; how a ring would truncate. A ring would move 5 and 6
- ;;; around to the back, like this:
- ;;;
- ;;; 5 -> 6 -> 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 7 -> 8
- ;;; ^^
- ;;;
- ;;; However, when 8 is added, the ring truncates 5 instead of
- ;;; 6, which is less than optimal.
- ;;;
- ;;; Conceptually, we can implement the "undoable stack" using
- ;;; two stacks of a sort called "truncatable stack", which are
- ;;; just simple stacks, but where you can truncate elements
- ;;; off of the bottom of the stack. Then, the undoable stack
- ;;;
- ;;; 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6
- ;;; ^^
- ;;;
- ;;; is equivalent to two truncatable stacks:
- ;;;
- ;;; 4 <- 3 <- 2 <- 1
- ;;; 5 <- 6
- ;;;
- ;;; where I reversed the direction to accord with the probable
- ;;; implementation of a standard list. To do another undo,
- ;;; I pop 4 off of the first stack and move it to the top of
- ;;; the second stack. A redo operation does the opposite.
- ;;; To truncate to the proper size, first chop off 6, then 5,
- ;;; then 1 -- in all cases, truncating off the bottom.
-
- (define-error 'trunc-stack-bottom "Bottom of stack reached.")
-
- (defsubst trunc-stack-stack (stack)
- ;; return the list representing the trunc-stack's elements.
- ;; the head of the list is the most recent element.
- (aref stack 1))
-
- (defsubst trunc-stack-length (stack)
- ;; return the number of elements in the trunc-stack.
- (aref stack 2))
-
- (defsubst set-trunc-stack-stack (stack new)
- ;; set the list representing the trunc-stack's elements.
- (aset stack 1 new))
-
- (defsubst set-trunc-stack-length (stack new)
- ;; set the length of the trunc-stack.
- (aset stack 2 new))
-
- ;; public functions:
-
- (defun make-trunc-stack ()
- ;; make an empty trunc-stack.
- (vector 'trunc-stack nil 0))
-
- (defun trunc-stack-push (stack el)
- ;; push a new element onto the head of the trunc-stack.
- (set-trunc-stack-stack stack (cons el (trunc-stack-stack stack)))
- (set-trunc-stack-length stack (1+ (trunc-stack-length stack))))
-
- (defun trunc-stack-top (stack &optional n)
- ;; return the nth topmost element from the trunc-stack.
- ;; signal an error if the stack doesn't have that many elements.
- (or n (setq n 0))
- (if (>= n (trunc-stack-length stack))
- (signal-error 'trunc-stack-bottom (list stack))
- (nth n (trunc-stack-stack stack))))
-
- (defun trunc-stack-pop (stack)
- ;; pop and return the topmost element from the stack.
- (prog1 (trunc-stack-top stack)
- (set-trunc-stack-stack stack (cdr (trunc-stack-stack stack)))
- (set-trunc-stack-length stack (1- (trunc-stack-length stack)))))
-
- (defun trunc-stack-truncate (stack &optional n)
- ;; truncate N items off the bottom of the stack. If the stack is
- ;; not that big, it just becomes empty.
- (or n (setq n 1))
- (if (> n 0)
- (let ((len (trunc-stack-length stack)))
- (if (>= n len)
- (progn
- (set-trunc-stack-length stack 0)
- (set-trunc-stack-stack stack nil))
- (setcdr (nthcdr (1- (- len n)) (trunc-stack-stack stack)) nil)
- (set-trunc-stack-length stack (- len n))))))
-
- ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
-
- ;;; FMH! FMH! FMH! This object-oriented stuff doesn't really work
- ;;; properly without built-in structures (vectors suck) and without
- ;;; public and private functions and fields.
-
- (defsubst undoable-stack-max (stack)
- (aref stack 1))
-
- (defsubst undoable-stack-a (stack)
- (aref stack 2))
-
- (defsubst undoable-stack-b (stack)
- (aref stack 3))
-
- ;; public functions:
-
- (defun make-undoable-stack (max)
- ;; make an empty undoable stack of max size MAX.
- (vector 'undoable-stack max (make-trunc-stack) (make-trunc-stack)))
-
- (defsubst set-undoable-stack-max (stack new)
- ;; change the max size of an undoable stack.
- (aset stack 1 new))
-
- (defun undoable-stack-a-top (stack)
- ;; return the topmost element off the "A" stack of an undoable stack.
- ;; this is the most recent position pushed on the undoable stack.
- (trunc-stack-top (undoable-stack-a stack)))
-
- (defun undoable-stack-a-length (stack)
- (trunc-stack-length (undoable-stack-a stack)))
-
- (defun undoable-stack-b-top (stack)
- ;; return the topmost element off the "B" stack of an undoable stack.
- ;; this is the position that will become the most recent position,
- ;; after a redo operation.
- (trunc-stack-top (undoable-stack-b stack)))
-
- (defun undoable-stack-b-length (stack)
- (trunc-stack-length (undoable-stack-b stack)))
-
- (defun undoable-stack-push (stack el)
- ;; push an element onto the stack.
- (let*
- ((lena (trunc-stack-length (undoable-stack-a stack)))
- (lenb (trunc-stack-length (undoable-stack-b stack)))
- (max (undoable-stack-max stack))
- (len (+ lena lenb)))
- ;; maybe truncate some elements. We have to deal with the
- ;; possibility that we have more elements than our max
- ;; (someone might have reduced the max).
- (if (>= len max)
- (let ((must-nuke (1+ (- len max))))
- ;; chop off must-nuke elements from the B stack.
- (trunc-stack-truncate (undoable-stack-b stack) must-nuke)
- ;; but if there weren't that many elements to chop,
- ;; take the rest off the A stack.
- (if (< lenb must-nuke)
- (trunc-stack-truncate (undoable-stack-a stack)
- (- must-nuke lenb)))))
- (trunc-stack-push (undoable-stack-a stack) el)))
-
- (defun undoable-stack-pop (stack)
- ;; pop an element off the stack.
- (trunc-stack-pop (undoable-stack-a stack)))
-
- (defun undoable-stack-undo (stack)
- ;; transfer an element from the top of A to the top of B.
- ;; return value is undefined.
- (trunc-stack-push (undoable-stack-b stack)
- (trunc-stack-pop (undoable-stack-a stack))))
-
- (defun undoable-stack-redo (stack)
- ;; transfer an element from the top of B to the top of A.
- ;; return value is undefined.
- (trunc-stack-push (undoable-stack-a stack)
- (trunc-stack-pop (undoable-stack-b stack))))
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