| Re: BackSpace/Delete - Re: You two agree -- Keith Thompson | |||
| Posted by Jean Ichbiah ® , Fri, Nov 05, 1999, 07:48:37 | Top | Forum | |
First Keith is right in pointing the contradictions between my two answers. (My later message was trying to point out that if Emmanuel was objecting to repeated sliding, this could not be an argument for tying the effect of sliding the space bar to the state since this was involving sliding.)
On the issue itself, I could go either way:
Solution A:
(1) Sliding any of the space bars in any direction backspaces
(2) Backspace key unchanged. That is, sliding the backspace key does a delete
Solution B:
(1) Sliding any of the space bars in any direction backspaces
(2) Sliding the backspace key toggles its state between <-- and --> while taps on the key produce backspaces or deletes depending on the current state.
Personally, I could go either way. We have implemented solution B on the WinCE platform and it works well. On the other hand, delete is rare so that this is not a big issue.
If we implement B, anyone who dislikes states can avoid ever sliding the backspace key and use left arrow followed by backspace for a delete.
At this point, I would like to ask for preferences as I don't have any strong preference or rationale for either solution myself. In the absence of strong preferences and/or if the issue does not raise much interest, we'll stay with A because it is the smallest implementation change.
Would it be practical to have separate dedicated keys for backspace and delete? With sliding for capital letters, perhaps there's less need for two shift keys, and one of them can be changed to a Delete key (though I'm sure someone would object to that).
You guessed correctly :-) I would object to having a dedicated key for something as rare as delete.
Jean Ichbiah
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