Re: [gnome-db] Screenshots: mystery buttons

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Mon, 2006-12-04 at 10:06 +0100, Vivien Malerba wrote:
> On 12/4/06, Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:
> > In the second picture here
> > http://www.openismus.com/temp/libgnomedb_3_0_docs/html/ch05.html
> >
> > there are four right-arrow buttons at the right edge of the dialog. I
> > can't imagine what they do. Is this screenshot out of date?
> >
> 
> Those buttons, hidden by default, allow the user a finer control of
> what's in the data entry (it's a popup menu). It can allow to set a
> value to NULL, or to reset a value, or to set the value to be the
> default value (if one is defined).

Ah. Thanks.

Can this be removed? Is it there by default? It seems inappropriate for
most users.

For instance,

"unset": 
- If the field is a text field, then "unset" (NULL) will have no meaning
for a user. The user can not be expected to distinguish between a NULL
value and an empty string.
- For other types, such as numbers and dates, clearing the entry should
result in a NULL value going into the database. I should not have to
explicitly choose "unset".

"set to default value":
- This is only useful if there is a default value specified for that
field.
- Usually it's OK to just use the default value for new fields.
- If this is wanted sometimes, it should be optional for some fields.

"reset to original value"
- What does this mean actually? Is it something I can use before
pressing Enter, to stop my changes being written to the database? If so,
wouldn't Undo already do this?

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com