Re: [lmi] Pasting between multiline edit controls

[Greg Chicares]

On 2016-05-12 23:44, Greg Chicares wrote:
[...]
> (I've since resolved the comment, or so I think, by trimming leading and
> trailing semicolons from strings pasted into input-sequence controls. I
> figured that would gracefully disregard empty cells at the top or bottom
> of a spreadsheet column that's copied and pasted. Maybe that's good, or
> maybe not. Arguments for removing that behavior (and the similar behavior
> before that change--removing semicolons at one end only, I forget which)
> are: (1) DWIM is generally an error; and (2) today I wanted to cons up a
> long input sequence, to test sequence-editor improvements, so I took the
> sequence I had in one control:
>   100000; 110000; 120000; 130000; 140000; 150000
> then added a semicolon at the end, copied the modified string to the
> clipboard, and did paste-paste-paste...and the trailing semicolon
> vanished. This makes my change seem idiot-friendly and user-proof.)

Before that change, trailing semicolons were removed.

After that change, leading and trailing semicolons were removed.

Now, no semicolons are removed, and my paste-paste-paste technique in (2)
above works.

Given invalid input, it is generally unsound to guess what the user might
intend, and it's worse when "fixing" invalid input removes a behavior (as
above) that a careful use might well desire. Pasting a spreadsheet column
that begins or ends with a blank cell is a trivial mistake, easily found
and corrected. When end users come to us with an actual problem along
these lines, the cause is usually blank cells in the middle, or garbage
characters from some UTF-16 application.