2.5. Deleting Cards

The Delete command behaves much the same as the Change command, with appropriate differences in the dialogs. To clarify the similarities and differences between Change and Delete, the scenario for Delete in this section parallels the scenario for Change in the preceding section.

When the user selects Delete from the Rolodex menu, the system updates the data area as shown in Figure 21.

Figure 21: Delete card dialog.


In response to the delete-card dialog, the user enters the name of a card to be deleted. As with both the Find and Change commands, the name must be entered exactly as it appears on an existing card in the rolodex. For example, to delete the card with name, "Fisher, Gene", the user types the name as shown in Figure 22.

Figure 22: Delete card dialog filled in.


To cancel the Delete command entirely, the user presses Cancel in the dialog. When Cancel is pressed, the entire data area is cleared, leaving it empty as in the initial rolodex display shown in Figure 1.

As with Find and Change, there are three possible outcomes when the user presses OK in the delete-card dialog: zero, one, or multiple cards found. When the system finds zero cards for the Delete command, it displays exactly the same dialog as for Find (Figure 10). When the user presses OK in the no-cards-found dialog, the system restores the display to the delete-card dialog that resulted in no cards being found.

When the system finds exactly one card, the display contains the information for that card, as shown in Figure 23.

Figure 23: One card found to delete.


At this point, the interface for Delete behaves differently than that for Find or Change. Specifically, instead of the Find or Change message, the message is "Delete the following card?". To confirm the delete, the user presses the OK button. When OK is pressed, the card is deleted and the entire data area is cleared, leaving it empty as in the initial rolodex display shown in Figure 1.

If the user presses Cancel in the delete confirmation dialog, the display is restored to the original delete-card dialog that resulted in the card being found, e.g., Figure 22 in this case.

As with Change, the Delete command can be applied to only one card at a time. If the system finds multiple cards for a given name, the user must first select a single card to be deleted. For example, Figure 24 shows the user having entered the name "Doe, Jane" in the initial delete-card dialog.

Figure 24: Delete card dialog filled in with name to be found on three cards.


Assuming there are three rolodex cards with this name, when the users presses OK in the dialog of Figure 24, the display appears as shown in Figure 25.

Figure 25: Multiple cards found to delete.


The multi-card dialog for Delete is essentially the same as that for Change shown in Figure 19. The only difference is the message at the top of the dialog that says "Select 1 of N cards to delete" instead of "Select 1 of N cards to change". As in the multi-card change dialog, the card fields are read only. The Next and Previous buttons work exactly as they do in the multi-card Change dialog. That is, the user presses these buttons to locate a specific card to delete. When the card is located, the user presses the Select button to proceed with the delete. For example, if the user selects the second "Jane Doe" card of three, the screen appears as shown in Figure 26.

Figure 26: Second of three delete cards selected.


At this point, the user proceeds in precisely the same manner as when a single card is found to delete.

The user may press Cancel at any point in the multi-card display to cancel the Delete command entirely. When Cancel is pressed in the multi-card list, the display is restored to the delete-card dialog that resulted in the cards being found. For example, if the user presses Cancel in the dialog of Figure 25 the system restores the display to the state shown in Figure 24.

In any delete-card display, none of the card fields is editable. That is, each of the five value display boxes is read only.



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