A physical key on the keyboard, positioned to the right of the backspace key, that undoes backspace key presses up to a definable buffer limit.

That is all.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 09 2019

Ctrl-z?
-- RayfordSteele, Oct 09 2019


And to the right of the unbackspace key, a nother key which is un-unbackspace, which undoes the effect of pressing the unbackspace key. (subtly different from just pressing backspace again because that would overwrite some of the buffer).
-- pocmloc, Oct 10 2019


[poc], you're not taking this seriously.

//Ctrl-z//

No, because "Undo" (Alt-Bksp) isn't the same; this cancels a single stroke of the Backspace key - and it is an actual physical key.
-- 8th of 7, Oct 10 2019


I am deadly serious.
-- pocmloc, Oct 10 2019


So, let's say you type the word "gadzooks" and then press the backspace key 3 times, and embolden your text. The screen now shows "gadzo" and the undo buffer contains "oks".

If at this point you press Ctrl-Z you will unembolden your text. Instead, you press the unbackspace key so your screen now shows "gadzoo" and the undo buffer contains "ks".

If you press the unbackspace key before you have backspaced anything, your computer will explode.
-- hippo, Oct 10 2019


//Instead, you press the unbackspace key so your screen now shows "gadzoo" and the undo buffer contains "ks".//

And suppose you then unbolden your text. But then you realise that you should not have unbackspaced the o.

Pressing ctrl-z would simply re-bolden your text. Pressing backspace would add a new line to the buffer, so theough the result would look the same on the surface, it would not actually be the same internal state. Instead, you could press the un-unbackspace key to return to the previous state of text-entry, i.e. //The screen now shows "gadzo" and the undo buffer contains "oks"//

I suppose this infinite array of un-un-un[....]-unbackspace keys is basically a second, parallel undo buffer.

You coul dinstead have an infinite array of <ctrl> keys. Press <ctrl 1>-z to undo formatting. Press <ctrl 2>-z to undo text entry. Press <ctrl 3>-z to undo saving to the disk. Press <ctrl n>-z to undo <insert custom buffer definition here>.
-- pocmloc, Oct 10 2019


//You could instead have an infinite array of <ctrl> keys// - but this implies an infinitely large keyboard which might then collapse under it's own gravity, forming an infinitely large black hole, which would prevent the user from typing.
-- hippo, Oct 10 2019


// your computer will explode. //

No, pressing unbackspace with an empty buffer inputs the next letter from the next word you need to type, generated from a markov-chain prediction based on the rest of the document. In this way, you only ever need to write half the document, and write the rest of it by holding down unbackspace.
-- mitxela, Oct 10 2019



random, halfbakery