Will Sadkin wrote:
An example:
> perhaps I start with:
>
> -345
>
> then I need to make it -45, so I go through this sequence:
> -3-45
> --45
> -45
>
> It sounds like your control would beep at me, or clear numbers away or
> do something surprising and/or annoying. A bit contrived, but
> you get my point. The control should not force me to edit the values
> in a particular sequence.Hey, I'm not entirely dim....
I didn't think you were. This is really a question of how much you think
a UI should hold the users hand. I don't like hand-holding, but I'm
probably not a typical user either.
To make a value of -45 from -345, in my control, you would either:
1) cursor over to the 3, ie. -3|45 (where | is the cursor)
and hit backspace,
2) cursor to before the 3 and hit delete,
3) select the 3 and hit delete.That is, standard wxTextCtrl motions apply; you just can't enter
illegal strings.
This was my point. In my above example, the string was illegal at an
intermediate point. I want to be able to do that! I only want the value
checked when I think I'm done, usually indicated by moving to the next
control, or pressing OK, or whatever. For integers, this is a bit of a
silly distinction, but for more complicated input (even floats) it's
not. It's still opinion, however, I can't say I've seen or done any
usability testing on this question.
I have a similar example, though more egregious:
On MacOS (before X), you need to set the amount of memory an app will
use (this is a bad thing, but was OK for 1984). You are given two boxes
to fill in:
Minimum size
Preferred size.
Minimum size must be less than or equal to the Preferred size, which is
reasonable enough, but if you made the minimum size larger, before
making the preferred size larger, it would give you an error, and re-set
the minimum size. You had to change the preferred size first. This drove
me crazy! I should be able to change it in any order I want, and only
get an error if I try to close the dialog with something wrong.
Anyway, I've pontificated enough. It looks like you've done some nice
work that we can all learn from, even if we disagree about the details.
-Chris
···
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Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer
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Chris.Barker@noaa.gov