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 VAX Edit- and list-boxes need this improvement!
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znakeeye
Tomato Guru

379 Posts

Posted - Oct 03 2007 :  08:32:17 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Most experienced users use Ctrl+Backspace frequently. Removing the last typed word is indeed a common operation. Especially in search boxes!

Can you please handle Ctrl+Backspace the "correct" way in all VAX input controls? In VAView.FIW/SIW you get an ugly square character instead... :(

feline
Whole Tomato Software

United Kingdom
18939 Posts

Posted - Oct 03 2007 :  3:57:17 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I don't know about most experienced users, but I had to go and press this to see what it did. I bounce between so many editors and programs that I avoid most clever keyboard combinations since I get fed up when they fail more often than they work *sigh*

VC6 find dialog, this inserts vertical black bars.
VS2005 find dialog, this inserts empty squares.

Is this working for you in search boxes?

Still it is a reasonable idea, certainly for some VA dialogs:

case=9194

zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness
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znakeeye
Tomato Guru

379 Posts

Posted - Oct 04 2007 :  08:36:12 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Why not try the richedit in this forum? ;)
... or VS 2003/2005 Find dialog (it sure removes the last word on my computer)
... or Win+R
... or the address bar in IE7

It's standard behavior :)
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feline
Whole Tomato Software

United Kingdom
18939 Posts

Posted - Oct 04 2007 :  11:50:48 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
VS2005, CTRL-F dialog, add a couple of words and press CTRL-BACKSPACE 5 times:



I would question the definition of the word "standard"

zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness
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rhummer
Tomato Guru

USA
527 Posts

Posted - Oct 04 2007 :  12:17:11 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I don't see this as standard behavior either. The search in IE7 doesn't do this, same for the Find Dialog in VS2005, neither does windows explorer, or the search box in the Vista start menu.

Win+R dialog does do it for me. It seems to me that any edit box that is supposed to take some kind of path, be it a url or file path supports this feature.

Tools Engineer - Raven Software
VS2005 SP2/VS2008 SP1 - VAX <LATEST> - Win 7 x64

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znakeeye
Tomato Guru

379 Posts

Posted - Oct 05 2007 :  07:04:02 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Seems like you have a virus Try Wordpad. It is standard behavior in the richedit field, and in many cases this is desired behavior in edit controls too.

I really cannot understand how you get those squares in VS2005. Could it be that ctrl+backspace generates a special key-code in the Swedish version of Windows?
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AdrianS
Senior Member

Canada
30 Posts

Posted - Oct 05 2007 :  09:03:40 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Ctrl+Backspace to delete the preceding word is standard behaviour in RichEdit controls, but not in standard edit controls.

Since the DOS days, Ctrl+Backspace has generated a DEL character (0x7f). That's what's showing up as a box in the normal edit boxes like VS's Ctrl+F.
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rhummer
Tomato Guru

USA
527 Posts

Posted - Oct 05 2007 :  09:45:34 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Ah so thats it. Thanks for the clarification :)

Tools Engineer - Raven Software
VS2005 SP2/VS2008 SP1 - VAX <LATEST> - Win 7 x64

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znakeeye
Tomato Guru

379 Posts

Posted - Oct 05 2007 :  4:53:24 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
AdrianS, can you please explain why I get the "desired" behavior in VS 2005 SP1, when pressing ctrl+backspace? Are you guys running DOS?

Edited by - znakeeye on Oct 05 2007 4:54:37 PM
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sean
Whole Tomato Software

USA
2817 Posts

Posted - Oct 05 2007 :  5:30:12 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
In my vs2005 find dialog, ctrl+backspace doesn't do anything - no delete, no squares.
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znakeeye
Tomato Guru

379 Posts

Posted - Oct 06 2007 :  05:23:37 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Must be language-related then?
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AdrianS
Senior Member

Canada
30 Posts

Posted - Oct 06 2007 :  07:03:10 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I'm wasn't trying to say Ctrl+Backspace is a bad idea. I was trying to explain the behaviour that people are seeing.

quote:
AdrianS, can you please explain why I get the "desired" behavior in VS 2005 SP1, when pressing ctrl+backspace?

I didn't say that it doesn't work in VS's text editor. My point was that displaying the boxes is the "normal" behaviour in a standard editbox. That includes the editbox which is a child of a combobox.

As you pointed out though, Win+R does support Ctrl+Backspace, but the authors of that dialog chose to subclass the edit control in order to add the behaviour. (BTW, it looks like there's a bug in Win+R case - you can't undo a Ctrl+Backspace delete, but you can undo a Ctrl+Del)

It would not suprise me that some non-English keyboard settings don't create the DEL character. Nor would it surprise me if different fonts don't display 0x7f as a box.
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mwb1100
Ketchup Master

82 Posts

Posted - Oct 11 2007 :  12:51:15 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
First off I want to thank Znakeeye - I was unaware of Ctrl-Backspace's uses until I read this thread.

Now for the more interesting stuff - Raymond Chen has posted a short history of Ctrl-Backspace (it's a "rogue feature"):

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2007/10/11/5395501.aspx
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sl@sh
Tomato Guru

Switzerland
204 Posts

Posted - Oct 15 2007 :  07:09:55 AM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Interesting...

Count me in on the list of 'expert users' (does 20+ years of programming make me that?) that didn't know of this feature(?).

Out of curiosity I just tried inside my VS 2003 and it worked. I checked the keyboard settings then, and it turned out that the key sequence Ctrl+Backspace is mapped to the function, Edit.WordDeleteToStart !

See ms-help://MS.VSCC.2003/MS.MSDNQTR.2003FEB.1033/vsintro7/html/vxurfVisualStudio70DefaultShortcutKeys.htm (inside VS)

I then removed this keymapping to see what the editor makes of Ctrl+Backspace on it's own, and what I got was a font remapping plus a box-char! Apparently in VS this is an explicit function mapping, not an intrinsic feature of the editor! If Ctrl+Backspace is a built-in function of rich edit controls, then VS is not using them!
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support
Whole Tomato Software

5566 Posts

Posted - Mar 17 2011 :  11:35:44 PM  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
case=9194 is implemented in build 1845

Whole Tomato Software, Inc.
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