Unabasheded laziness and the phone edit

[Fairlight]

On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 10:25:06PM -0400, John Esak may or may not have
proven themselves an utter git by pronouncing:
> 
> Yes, but data entry is _all about_ what you end up with... not so much how
> easy it is to get it... what you end up with has to be consistent. With
> "edits" this is most precisely so, and it sounds like you are saying that
> ending up with
> 
>    (201) 337-8009
>          337 8009
> 
> is okay and even desriael. We disagrees.  The data should look like
> 
>     (01) 337-8009
>          337-8009

And I'm in full agreement with you, John.  You're misinterpreting what I
said.  The end -display- should look exactly as you showed, and indeed mine
does accomplish that.  It will turn any space between prefix and suffix
into a dash, period, the end.

But I -allow- you to type a space -or- a dash during data entry, and the
edit specifically forces the place between area code and prefix to be a
space, even if you entered a dash, and the space between the prefix and the
suffix to be a dash, even if you entered a space.

That way you can -enter- it with all spaces or all dashes, but you get
precisely what you showed in your second (correct) example.

We agree entirely on what it should display.  I think I must not have
explained myself clearly enough--again.  :-/

> to stay consistent with what phone numbers look like in our society. They do
> not look like
> 
>          337 8009
> 
> at least, not anwwhere I've seen.

Agreed, and my edit does not let them display like that--it lets you ENTER
them like that.  My theory is that it should look properly formatted
according to the conventions we both agree on, but if you enter a dash
after the area code just as after the prefix and have the area code
separation come off conventionally, you should be able to enter the entire
thing using spaces, even after the prefix, and have it come off looking 
conventionally--it converts to a dash.  Reread my original edit--you'll see
that I reverse which string literal is deleted and which is substituted,
depending on which breakpoint in the phone number you're at.  It works as
you would expect.

mark->
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