With the advent of the ‘stamper function’ in some labs it appears that a generalized cut an paste function could be implemented in labs so that the user could type in or select a small to large sequence and then ‘stamp’ it at will in various places in the complete sequence. This would greatly facilitate moving small bits and motifs around the puzzles.
The current ‘stamper function’ allows you to point anywhere in the sequence and paste the stamped sequence. The current ‘paste’ function allows you to type a sequence of variable length and paste it starting at position number one (origin).
Why not combine these and a drag and drop selection within the sequence? I know it would greatly enhance my ability to creatively attack these problems in an efficient manner.
You may remember that there was once a patch for so-called “shiftable” puzzles, where bases could be added and deleted in certain locations. While the motivation behind it was making sense, the execution in the code was not that great (translation: buggy), and since I started working on the project, I’ve done my best to remove that code, because a different approach is clearly indicated.
And you’re right, the “stamper” tool is a step in the new direction I took. Still, this won’t be the “solution”, and I’m still trying to figure out what would be the simplest, easiest to use, easiest to implement mechanism for selecting and shifting segments within a design. Scripted constraints like the “stamper” won’t cut it for a drag&drop operation, but I could certainly implement it in Flash. There are still open questions about the manipulations (keyboard and/or mouse) and about the visual rendering of this operation, which should be as intuitive as possible.
At this point, I don’t have the answers to many questions, like how and when this will be available, but I wanted to acknowledge your feature request, and inform you and the community that I’ve been thinking about it for a very long time already. Thanks for bringing it up though
