2.8. Data Entry Details

This section of the requirements defines data entry details noted but not fully defined in the scenarios.

2.8.1. Card Field Values

The information entered for a card must meet the following constraints:

  1. the Name field must be less than or equal to 30 characters;
  2. the Id field must be exactly 9 decimal digits and unique across all cards in a single rolodex;
  3. the Age must be an integer between 0 and 200, inclusive;
  4. the Sex field must be the single uppercase letter 'F' or 'M';
  5. the Address field must be less than or equal to 40 characters.
The characters in the Name and Address fields may be any legally typeable character on a standard computer keyboard, except for the characters that invoke the editing commands listed below or unprintable control characters that may be reserved by the operating environment in which the Rolodex Tool is running.

When typing in any data entry field, the user may edit the text of entered data using functions typically available in a computer operating system. The following specific commands are required of any implementation:

  1. backward delete of characters with the delete or backspace key;
  2. backward and forward character motion using right and left arrow keys;
  3. cursor positioning to the next edit field using the tab key;
  4. text selection using the mouse.

Additional keyboard functionality, such as using the return key for a shortcut to the OK button, is not specifically required, but allowed per the conventions of the operating environment in which the Rolodex Tool is running.

2.8.2. Search Strings

Search strings are used in the Find command and the Search feature of detailed help. In the case of Find, searching is performed on a strictly exact match basis. The precise rules for exact string match are the following:

  1. the strings have the same number of characters;
  2. the characters in the ith position of each string are equal, per the definition of equality defined by the character coding scheme employed in the operating environment in which the Rolodex Tool is running (e.g., the ASCII coding scheme).
In the case of Search for detailed help, searching is performed on the basis of case-insensitive exact match or strictly exact match, depending on the setting of the Case sensitive selection in the search dialog. The precise rules for case-insensitive exact match are the following:
  1. the strings have the same number of characters;
  2. the characters in the ith position of each string are equal, per the definition of equality defined by the character coding scheme, except that the upper and lower case version of the same letter character are considered equal.

The Find and Search commands differ with respect to substring matching. In the case of Find, substring matching is not performed. For Find, a full-length card name is both the search string and the target of the search. In order for a match to occur, the length of the search string entered in the find-card dialog must be exactly the same as the length of the name in a rolodex card. Hence, the search name "Smith" does not match the name "Smith, J" in some card, because the search string "Smith" matches only a substring of the target string "Smith, J".

In the case of help searching, substring matching does occur since a search string is compared to multiple targets within the help text. Specifically, the search string is compared against all text substrings of the same length, from the first to the last character positions in the text of a help topic. Hence, for example, the help search string "save" does match in the text "... is saved on ...".

2.8.3. File Access

In order for a file to be used in an Open command, it must meet the following constraints:

  1. it must exist;
  2. it must be readable by the Rolodex Tool user;
  3. it must be a legal Rolodex file, produced using the Save or Save As Rolodex command.
In order for a file to be used in a Save or Save As command, it must meet the following constraints:
  1. it must have a legal file name, per the requirements of the operating environment in which the Rolodex Tool is running;
  2. it must be writeable by the Rolodex Tool user.

If the user enters the name of an existing file in the file-save dialog, the system responds with a dialog of the form shown in figure 49.

Figure 49: Offer-to-overwrite dialog.


In this figure, the user has entered the name "Office Rolodex", which is assumed already to exist. If the user presses Yes, the system proceeds to save the rolodex, overwriting the existing contents of the file. The system then removes both the file-exists and save-file dialogs from the screen. If the user presses No, the save command is canceled, the contents of the rolodex workspace are not saved, and the specified file is not changed. In the No case, only the file-exists dialog is removed from the screen. The user may then enter a different file name in the save-file dialog.

The Rolodex File commands are typical of those available in many user-oriented software tools. Details of the user interface dialogs for these commands can vary widely in different operating environments. The file interface dialogs shown in Section 2.6 are simple and generic, indicating the minimal user interface functionality that must be available in any operating environment. This minimal functionality is the following:

  1. Rolodex files are identified by unique name;
  2. the type of a Rolodex file can be distinguished from other file types, such that it can be identified by the Rolodex tool as a valid Rolodex file;
  3. files are stored in some form of navigable file system, details of which are implementation-specific.
When implemented in a specific operating environment, the file dialogs may contain additional features, including shortcuts for typing long file names and the means to navigate conveniently in the file space.



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