|
|
Posted by Whit on 11/02/57 11:57
Maybe I should have just posted to alt.talk.me.out.of.it
:P
Harlan Messinger wrote:
> [top-posting corrected]
>
> Whit wrote:
> > Harlan Messinger wrote:
> >> I'm curious about the bigger picture, and about why it would be
> >> desirable to have the transformation occur while the user is typing. Why
> >> not just convert it at the server when the form is submitted? Is the
> >> idea that you expect the user to type a whole sentence, and you intend
> >> to correct it? What is someone types "my name is bob becker"? Is
> >> converting it to "My name is bob becker" going to be satisfactory? Will
> >> you add a period on the end if the user omits it?
>
> > Here is the problem in a nutshell:
> >
> > Think about a company name. It should have capitalized names, like:
> >
> > Bella's Sandwich Shop.
> >
> > I want to help the lazy user toward that structure so that if they
> > never cap, or worse, keep the caps lock on, then it will be entered
> > correctly.
>
> If the user is too lazy to care how his business is listed, isn't that
> his problem?
>
> > However:
> >
> > Sometimes things shouldn't be managed in that way, like:
> >
> > Bob's Adult Video XXX.
>
> Not to mention "Dan and Sam's Grill", where the "a" in "and" is
> *supposed* to be lower case.
>
> > The formatting must be turn-offable so that doesn't become 'Xxx'. So my
> > goal is to create this field which auto-corrects, but that people can
> > turn off if it becomes annoying. Also I would like to avoid server load
> > and the trouble of refreshing.
>
> The processing necessary to adjust the casing of a short string of
> characters is utterly negligible. This isn't 1980.
>
> > I pictured a Word-like assistance in
> > formatting. (Except that it is easy to turn off ... :D)
>
> Well, Word is an enormous, sophisticated piece of software, and even
> Word doesn't title-case phrases with "xxx" or "and" correctly. Any
> corrections you can add will handle only a subset of the problems, and
> may produce as many errors as it fixes. And on top of that it will
> disconcert the user if you do this while he's typing. And then you plan
> to give the user a way to turn it off if it's annoying (or, more
> precisely, if it replaces correct entries with incorrect ones) so now
> that's one more thing the user has to figure out. IMO you're adding a
> lot of complexity only to achieve a hit-or-miss result.
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|