Hi Antonija,

There are several different ways of merging text, and they behave
differently with regard to the visibility of parental objects after the text
has been merged.

1. If you merge two or more text objects, the parents are hidden. (In most
cases this is the desired behavior, but it does make it difficult in those
cases where you want to reuse the parents for some other purpose.)

2. If you merge text to a point (which requires the shift key), both the
text and the point remain visible.

3. If you merge text using a custom template, the parents remain visible.

Here's my suggestion when you want the parents to remain visible in case #1.
Turn the construction into a custom tool. Merge two text objects, show both
parents, select all three, and then create a new custom tool. When you use
the custom tool instead of the command to merge two text objects, the
parents will remain visible.

If you do this frequently, put the custom tool into your Tool Folder so you
always have it available.

(As an alternative you could use the custom template "={1}{2}" to merge the
objects. This has the same result, so you'll have to decide which method is
more convenient for what you're doing.)

I hope these suggestions help!

This is part of an interesting group of problems in designing software,
because you have to anticipate what most people will want most of the time.
Sometimes such decisions are fairly clearcut, but sometimes it's a situation
where half the time you want it one way and half the time you want it
another way. The ideal program would be able to read your mind, but without
that ability the program can only make a best guess. Sometimes the guess
will be right and sometimes wrong.

When the default behavior we choose is right nearly 100%% of the time, nobody
notices. (That's a good thing: ideally the program just works, and users
don't realize that there are design decisions underlying the behavior they
see.) But sometimes the situation is not nearly so clear. As a user, your
satisfaction when the program's behavior matches your desire is not nearly
as great as your frustration when the behavior does not match your desire.

I fear that merging text is something that's used in such a variety of ways,
for such a variety of purposes, that we'll never satisfy user desires
anywhere near 100%% of the time. In any case, feedback such as yours is
helpful as we continue to consider how to improve Sketchpad's interface.

By the way, it was very nice to finally meet you personally last week!

Best regards,
Scott

Scott Steketee
Sketchpad Projects
http://www.keypress.com/sketchpad/

On 7/6/08 3:12 PM, "Antonija Horvatek" gmail.com> wrote: