Re: [XForms] Edit keys for input objects

[Ruud Warmoeskerken]

Hello, there everybody

I wrote a few programs in the past which are used for preparing data coming 
from textfiles to data that can be inserted into an Oracle database. The 
Xforms-package is only used to have a nice interface. The user can specify some 
options he wants to used, before a real batch program is used to do the real 
work.
They are using this for about 6 or 7 years. Because it is running in an IBM AIX 
environment from a long time ago, I had to use the binaries for the 
Xform-package that were available then. I think it is even pre version 1.0.
Up until now no one had any complaints about the way the backspace/delete-key 
works. 
In fact one uses only the backspace-key to edit the data you just typed in.
I think you should leave it this way, or you should have some kind of software 
switch to change the behavior of these keys.
I'm a regular Mac user, and in that system you don't have a real delete key. I 
never missed it.

Hopefully this gives you a little idea.

Kind Regards

 Ruud Warmoeskerken

On 03 Aug 2011, at 21:07, Jens Thoms Toerring wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
>   I just got a "complaint" from someone (not on the mailing
> list but a user of a program that is using XForms) about the
> way the "Delete" key is handled in input objects: both the
> "Delete" and the "Backspace" key delete the character before
> the cursor. But it seems to be a common convention to have
> the "Backspace" key remove the character before the cursor
> and "Delete" to erase the key under/after the cursor. At
> least that's what I also see with other libaries (Qt, KDE,
> Gnome) or e.g. in the shell, under emacs etc. And the per-
> son making me aware of this that the behaviour in XForms
> can be a bit annoying when you're used to have "Delete"
> erase the next character and it instead deletes text you
> wanted to keep.
> 
> On the other hand this behaviour of XForms goes back at
> least to version 1.0 (that's the first one I have access
> to), so other people might have gotten used to its cur-
> rent behaviour, which could get angry if it would be
> changed. And, of course, it's possible to redefine the
> behaviour using e.g. fl_set_input_editkeymap().
> 
> Question is now if I should change the defaults or leave
> it to the individual programmer to correct the keymap?
> I'm sitting on a fence a bit since I hardly ever use the
> "Delete" key and can see both the arguments for keeping
> the old behaviour and changing it to something more in
> line with what people nowadays might expect as the de-
> fault. Would anyone care to comment?
> 
>                           Best regards, Jens
> 
> PS: A bit ago I proposed to move to a "real" version
>    1.2 release. As far as I can see nobody has either
>    complained or agreed. Is there anybody out there
>    having an opinion or proposals what needs be done
>    before making a 1.2 release?
> -- 
>  \   Jens Thoms Toerring  ________      address@hidden
>   \_______________________________      http://toerring.de
>