Unabasheded laziness and the phone edit

[Bill Vermillion]

I know you'll find it hard to believe, but on Fri, Aug 06 10:21 , Fairlight
actually admitted to saying:" 

> >From inside the gravity well of a singularity, Tony Ryder shouted:
> > 
> > PHONE  .\ <"("> N N N <")[!-!] "> <" "> N N N <"-"> N N N N | phone1
> > PHONE1 .\ N N N <"-"> N N N N

> 'Cept that's not actually uniform for data entry. It lets you
> enter a numbers all run together, a space, -or- a dash at the
> area code breakpoint, but forces only a dash or run-together
> numbers at the prefix break point. Doubt it matters much, but
> asymmetrical things drive me nuts. I think it's an OCD thing.
> :)

> So since 5.0.7 bailed on the . before the \ would someone
> please tell me what it does? It wasn't in Bob's documentation.
> (I had to look up the actual edit sin tax from scratch, as I
> haven't written an edit since 1995--literally!) I know 5.0.7
> didn't like it.

I'd suggest perhaps adding one more thing to the phone edit.

The formerly European standard of dots to separate group in
printed material seems to be catching on here - and running from
a numeric keybpad it is very fast to type 888.555.1212.  The dashes
are also on a keypad but no )'s.  And when you use a standard
keyboard and touch type numbers dots is also quite fast as the ('s
and )'s require shifting.

Since several areas of the country now do not have 'area codes'
any more and it's just plain old 10-digit-dialing for all numbers,
and that in the near future once you have a phone number it can
follow you anywhere you go - and it will be ten digits - 'area
codes' are a hangover from the first days of direct-dialing, that
date to AT&T's experiment in New Jersey.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com