With EditEngine, we don't need to do this stuff anymore -- it automatically folds transactions which apply at create time into an "X created this object" aggregate by default.

Likewise.

No more quotes required around values in the string -- we style them in the web UI and quote them in text email, so if you don't strip quotes it will generate sarcastic-looking double-quoted email.

This is probably not right, but it has nowhere to move. Is it even needed?

This has nowhere to go, should transactions types implement "has effect"?

This is OK to bring into ModularTransactions, but it might also be OK to just remove it completely. I'd expect no-op updates to already no-op correctly, and if you, say, reorder paths it seems OK to count that as a change? This might be vestigial from long ago.

I'd say:

• Try deleting the code, see how bad no-op updates (edit paths, save without changes) and reorders (edit paths, reorder some, save) are.
• If they're fine or fixable, just delete this code and tweak the title text or whatever.
• If they're hard for some reason, port this into ModularTransactions as a new method.

Should no longer be necessary. Getting rid of this was an explicit goal of ModularTransactions (and, generally, a goal in new code). It is replaced by HandlePools (e.g., via $viewer->loadHandles()) which just more-or-less do this correctly without requiring you to do any work.

The handle rendering methods in ModularTransaction use HandlePools automatically.

(This magic isn't completely transparent in all cases but it's pretty close.)

I had to use generate here because the transaction doesn't have its storage attached at this point, I think? I got an exception from the web UI if I called getOldValue.

Same deal as the owners transaction.