That's an interesting idea.
I've been through a few flavors of self punching techniques for vo and haven't found one where a time and labor saving script or action could be used by itself in all circumstances. I tried creating a series of punch-in actions across the top of the keyboard and ended up abandoning them and going back to how I did it without them. Which is to just place the cursor however many seconds before the punch, as a manual "pre roll", hitting spacebar to roll and hitting "r" softly to punch in. Not the most advanced, but I would keep discovering that an automated function sometimes isn't as good as a manual one, if you have a groove on it. The slight downside is that you do have to look up from the script to place the cursor, but if you have Reaper set for continuous scrolling, when you stop it's always right in the middle of the screen. Have the cursor remain where you stop when stopping (instead of returning to the same start, as I have it during other kinds of recording) and you just need to use an action to move cursor back x seconds (if you can keep your stops consistent with when the mistake was). I actually don't even do that, I just use the "move cursor back 5 secs" and hit it 1 or 2 times. That's kind of an example of what I meant. When I'm doing vo, and I think probably with most others, one keystroke for each function works, but setting up several different keys on each for the several different timing options just ended up being slower due to having 15 keystrokes : )
That's a cool idea about going back to the last waveform, though. Looking forward to what the scripting folks have to say about it. I'm ok doing it manually, because it always stops in the middle of the screen, so I can pretty much always back up the cursor 5 or 10 secs, manually punch and keep going. This has just made me realize that I could have playback initiate immediate upon going back 5 secs, but that would probably get to the punch too soon for me 75% of the time
Sometimes, though I haven't the will to punch everything, so I'll read through it and not stop recording. I'll throw down markers every time I pick up again and when I edit just jump marker to marker. Another way is to just leave 5 seconds before starting in and then visually it will be obvious where to edit. Sometimes doing punch ins for hours is just too much, can't face it : ) So I'll do one of those.
I'm not really much of a vo person, but I've recorded a billion vo projects as engineer and editor, and I never stop getting emails from actors who *used* to get paid to go to a studio and read who are now expected to be able to read and edit in their homes, and nearly all say "This isn't what I signed up for! I have no aptitude to do this and have no desire to! I can't stand this self recording." On the long projects it's really grueling to wear all the hats!