[Squirrel-sql-users] Oppinions on data representation?

Hi folks,

I'm well into the work on making the ContentTab tables editable, and as 
part of that work I'm going to have to deal with a couple of issues of 
how the data is formatted and displayed.

Squirrel's default operation is to display binary data types as
	<Binary>
or
	<Other>
unless the user sets the Session Properties to show those fields as 
Strings, in which case they show something like:
	1001010010

When a table is editable, the "<Binary>" representation cannot be 
directly edited, which means that when you enter a binary field, the 
data would have to automatically switch representations just in case you 
wanted to edit it.  This can be done, but it would be simpler to 
implement and simpler for the user if there was only one representation. 
  An easy way to do this is to remove the options in the Session 
Properties and always display the data in the String form.  So my first 
set of questions are:

	- Does anyone prefer to see "<Binary>" in the field instead of the actual 
data, and if so, why?
	- How upset would you be if we removed the options and set it so that you 
always see the actual data?

The second issue is this.  If I am editing a nullable VARCHAR field and 
I remove all of the characters from the visible display and save it, 
does that mean:
	- set the field to null, or
	- put a zero-length string into the table?
My suggestion is that when you remove all the characters, that means a 
zero-length string, and if you hit the delete key again, the field 
toggles between a zero-length string an a <null>.  Would that work for you?

That raises another thought, which is how to deal with that "Oh #*@%&" 
moment just after you have accidentially touched a field that you did 
not want to change and you don't remember how it looked originally.  Ome 
way might be to have a right-click menu item for "Restore original Cell 
contents", but that may be hard to implement.  Another approach could be 
that when you delete everything from the cell and hit the delete key 
again, the original contents are restored.  With a nullable field, this 
would cycle through the possibilities as follows:
	- delete the data in the cell => the data is zero-length
	- hitting delete key again => <Null>
	- hitting delete key again => original contents of the field
Would this be ok?


Glenn

PS. Sorry for cross-posting, but I haven't seen much activity in the 
user's forum.  I'm not sure if there are folks watching that list who 
are not also on the developer's list, and I wanted to include everyone.