Digit placeholders

[fsturlese]

We are testing iX 2.0: one thing we noticed was that the numeric fields are filled with the "#" placeholder. The problem is, the width of the placeholder is significantly larger than the real digit, thus making it almost impossible to determine the real size of the field during the editing. See the attached example, where the placeholders (in cyan) are overlaid on the page shown at runtime.

In iX 1.31 the "0" digit was used as a placeholder, and it was easy to determine the real size of the field, just setting the "zero fill" property temporarily.

Moreover, now there is no way to visually check whether the "zero fill" property is active by mistake, which was easy to see before.

Any way to step back on this?
Thanks,
Federico.

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[mark.monroe]

It looks like the '#' character is wider than the '0' character. If you change the font to one with a uniform width, like Courier New, then you can see that the '0' and the '#' now line up.

I do not think this is going to be changed back. The AnalogNumeric box is also used for strings, which is why they switched to '#' from 0's.

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[fsturlese]

Mark, the Courier New font is the only Windows font with non-proportional spacing. It looks awful in any application where the graphics aspect is worth zero more than nothing.

If you take a look at the attached file you'll see that the # character is not a good choice as a placeholder, neither for digits nor for characters, for any popular Windows font other than Courier family.

Why don't you keep the good aspects you developed in Information Designer, instead of trashing them? ID used either L or W as text placeholder, and 0 as a numeric placeholder, which was a wise choice.

Please note that we are not talking about choices of personal taste: such kind of regressions in your product would add hours to the development time of your customers, and make your product less appealing.

Please consider this issue. At least make the placeholder character selectable.

Regards,
Federico.