Re: *text-restricted-dialog-item*

[alms@cambridge.apple.com (Andrew L. M. Shalit)]

In article <9203061852.AA20968@MIT.EDU> cfry@MIT.EDU (Christopher Fry) writes:


    As I convert my 1.3.2 code to
   > 2.0 code, I hope I'll be able to contribute something useful.
   > 
    This class of
   > dialog items is useful in a variety of situations.      
   > 
   > 
   > (defclass *text-restricted-dialog-item* (editable-text-dialog-item)
   >   ((max-length :initarg :max-length :accessor max-length)
   >    (char-set   :initarg :char-set   :accessor char-set))
   >   (:default-initargs
   >     :max-length nil
   >     :char-set   nil))
   Bravo! Restricting user input is  useful MOST times an editable text 
   dialog is required. 

   Having worked on much hairier systems that have a superset of this 
   functionality, let me guide further development by offering this 
   obvervation.
   The user needs to know the status of the currently being typed in string 
   on a character-by-character basis. There are four possible states:
   1. The current string can match a correct result if extended.
   2. The current string is a correct result
   3. Both one and two
   4. Neither one or two.

   It would be nice to find an intuitive display of these two bits that 
   didn't take up much space in the dialog.

Number 2 can be shown be enabling the OK button (or equivalent), and keeping
it disabled when 2 is not true.