We need a referendum... on MEMO...

Fairlight fairlite at fairlite.com
Tue Jan 16 10:28:19 PST 2007


The honourable and venerable John Esak spoke thus:
> P.S. - Yes, I understand that it could be viewed that TAB should work as a
> TAB inside the  little MEMO editor... That wasn't a bad design decision...
> or really any kind of foul up at all.... It is all very correct... and I
> don't really mean to say it is "wrong".  BUT, it totally screws up the
> general way filePro is used... and in the last analysis makes MEMO's that
> much harder to use.  


In truth, neither method is 100% optimal.  I respect (and prefer) literal
data integrity, the way they have it.  I also see your point and respect
that.

I'd personally opt for a PFMEMOTABOUT=ON to turn on your preferred
methodology, with the default setting of OFF to maintain literal data
integrity by default.  Best compromise that fits all users.

filePro isn't the only program that has to suffer with this sacrifice
to achieve that kind of functionality.  Both GUI and character-based IM
clients that deal with protocols capable of multi-line, multi-paragraph
input have had to contend with ENTER and TAB as unusable to get out of the
message field.  The results have been as mixed as ^X, ALT-Enter, and a slew
of other solutions.  This kind of multi-modal input is always a pain from a
design standpoint.  

Actually, new fancy "word processor in a web page" widgets in some message
forums have made the same fiasco of TAB that you're hitting in fP, but on
HTML forms.  Drives me #)%)*&! nuts, I daresay.  "But you're supposed to be
using a mouse!"  ...Yeah, but not in a char-based environment.

I say give it two selectable modes via env var.

mark->
-- 
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