A quickfill problem and an enhancement suggestion

[Paul Abrahams]

On Thursday, April 07, 2011 08:02:00 AM Colin Scott wrote:
> > Just to clarify: does an initial backspace (or backspacing past the
> > first character) now disable Quickfill for the current transaction
> > until the transaction has been completed?
> 
> Whether or not it does, the problem with that solution is that you don't
> actually know whether quickfill is going to apply or not to any given
> entry until you start typing it, and by then it's too late to do an
> initial backspace - you have to backspace twice and then start typing
> again!
> 
> What is needed is a one-touch solution that will work *whenever* it is
> applied, cancelling quickfill until the next time the cursor returns to
> that field, and displaying *excactly* what was typed instead of the
> quickfill value.

Quite true.  But a convention that backspacing past the beginning of the field 
cancels quickfill is not inconvenient, since holding down the backspace key 
causes it to repeat.  That's the generalization of an initial backspace.

But I'm not holding out for this solution.  Almost any method of cancelling 
quickfill, other than having to overtype a long sequence of characters, is 
welcome.  Of particular importance is being able to get rid of an unwanted 
split introduced by quickfill.

Paul