Unabasheded laziness and the phone edit

[Fairlight]

At Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 05:55:44PM -0400 or thereabouts, 
suspect John Esak was observed uttering:
> top-posted
> 
> Mark,
> I don't understand what you mean about his not supplying it in the short
> form of the edit... It is not required there. The whole edit works
> properly... what is unbalanced? It sounds like your saying you would want
> the fields to carry:
> 
>    (201) 337-8009
>          427 9009
> 
> That would be very wierd and unconventional.

Okay, I'll explain...

\ <"("> N N N <")"> [!"-"!] <" "> N N N <"-"> N N N N | N N N <"-"> N N N N

That's what Ken had.  The way I find it unbalanced is that you may enter a
space -or- a dash in the first position, between area code and prefix, and
either way you end up with a space there.  

But you may -not- enter a space and have it translate to a dash in the
short form.  I would have rewritten the short form's notation as:
     N N N <"-">[!" "!] N N N N

That way, you can enter a whole number:

502 555 1212
555 1212
502-555-1212
555-1212

...and either way it would convert to the proper format, with a dash
between prefix and suffix, and a space between the area code betwen the
area code and prefix.  It creates a uniformness of data entry where you can
use either a space or a dash in either place when typing it, but it will
convert each location to its proper form for display.

The way he had it, you could get the following to work:

502-555-1212

But the following would not work.

502 555 1212

It's just a symmetry/consistancy issue I have with data entry.  You tend to
do the same thing in both places (most people use dashes.  Some use periods
as I accomodated for with the BVPHONE, where Bill suggested that also be
allowed.  It's a matter of allowing any of the options in either location
and translating each to what it should be for that place.  Anything that
makes data entry easier is better for the operator.

Hopefully that's a clearer explanation.

mark->
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