For "real" input fields, (that is, form:text elements), direct entry works.
I assume that the case being discussed is for conventional field values that someone wants to edit. (Like a page number or a date field in a footer.) In those cases, I suppose direct entry might be useful. But there is probably something needed to avoid accidental type-overs and to also warn that other actions might later over-write the change. Allowing for that, allowing type-over seems like a reasonable improvement. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Oliver-Rainer Wittmann [mailto:orwittm...@googlemail.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 08:23 To: dev@openoffice.apache.org; us...@openoffice.apache.org Subject: [improvement idea] "in-place" editing of Input Fields in Writer Hi, recently I got notice about our (from my point of view) very user-unfriendly way for editing Input Fields in Writer. Currently, you can not place the cursor into an Input Field which in general is shown with a grey background when Menu View - Field Shading is on. If you click on the Input Field, a modal dialog pops up. In this dialog you can edit the Input Field's content. On confirmation of the dialog the Input Field's content is changed in the text document. To edit the next Input Field you need to click on it. There is also a special key shortcut - namely Shift-Ctrl-F9. This key shortcut opens the Input Field content editing dialog for the first field. This time the dialog has a Next button by which you can confirm your change and switch directly to the next Input Field. A Previous button is not available. By Murphys law the dialog hides most of the time the Input Field in the text document. I have got the opinion that such an editing experience is bad, especially, if the document is a form which makes use of a lot of Input Fields to be filled by the user. [ ... ]
