On Sun, 25 Dec 2005 13:02:22 -0500, Walt Farrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > You might try back-tabbing before entering the response. It does sound > like an emulator problem. > So, I thought, surely by now I know better than to make that mistake, or at least to recognize it when I do. Nope; you guessed right. I've edited all my Settings files to turn it off now.
To Jay M: you mentioned changing a default. I don't know how to do this. Each time I create a new Settings, it comes up with "Replace Nulls ..." set and I must go to "Session; Features ..." and reset it. Is there a master settings template somewhere I can edit? Regardless, the dialogue is poorly adapted to the current prevalence of emulators with a feature akin to "Replace Nulls". An experiment shows: The string the user enters is truncated to its leftmost 18 characters and the parser ignoress leading blanks. The error message echoes the 18 characters, which were all blank in my case. I can make several suggestions to improve user friendliness: 1. Process the entire input string rather than truncating to 18 characters. 2. Truncate to 18 characters only after stripping leading blanks. 3. When reporting the error, echo the entire input string, not the truncated version. 4. Provide an explicit "Input Data Truncated" message where appropriate. 5. Restrict the modifiable input field to the 18 characters that will actually be processed. 6. At the prompt, place the cursor at the beginning of the input field, rather than in the interior, either by putting the cursor at a different location or by making the area preceding the cursor nonmodifiable. Etc. Of numerous things that were done wrong, doing even one of them right would be a boon to the customer. But I recognize this is shouting in the wind given the uncertain and controversial metabolic state of TSO. -- gil -- StorageTek INFORMATION made POWERFUL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
