[Tlf-devel] Rethinking Escape key action

[Nate Bargmann]

Working a bit of ARRL SS this morning and with its long exchange I got
caught out by the Escape key when I had fat fingered and aimed to only
stop the CW transmission.  From the manual page:

       Escape Stop CW transmission, clears characters, returns to  call  input
              field, keyboard off (universal undo).

              As  an  example,  characters  have been entered in both the call
              input and exchange fields, the cursor is in the exchange  field,
              and  the transmission of a CW message is in progress.  The first
              press of ‘Escape’ will stop the CW transmission  and  clear  the
              exchange  field and position the cursor to the leftmost position
              of the exchange field.  The second press of ‘Escape’  will  move
              the  cursor to the right of the last character in the call input
              field.  The third press of ‘Escape’ will clear  the  call  input
              field.

It's that clearing of the exchange field on first press that gave me
heartburn a couple of times.  Recall that I am an old CT hand but I do
like the default ESM of Tlf except that in CT Escape only stopped CW
transmission as I recall.  CT offered Ctl-W/F11 to "wipe" the input
fields.  Don't get me wrong, Escape is handy to quickly clear the fields
but I'm not sold on its default behavior in this contest.

I see that the manual page documents no action for Ctl-W, so it should
be available to clear both fields.  F11 is a CW message and I've no need
to change it.  My idea would require adding a logcfg.dat option so that
Escape only stops CW transmission no matter how many times it is
pressed.  The option would switch Escape between the default behavior
and my suggested behavior.  Ctl-W would still be available to wipe all
fields regardless of the Escape mode.

I may poke at it bit today.

Thoughts?

73, Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

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