Character counter while typing in client?

HCL Domino Domino Forum
1

I need to limit the number of characters a user can type into on a particular field. I know I can have a validation formula to limot the number of characters but that does not do the user much good while typing.

I have some text below the field that tells the user of the limitation but they really don’t know how many characters they have typed.

I can’t think of any way to create a counter other than to use a Notestimer as someone else suggested. This seems awfully ineffcient.

Why there is no keypress event in the client, I will never know.

Anyone have ideas on how to do this?

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Subject: Character counter while typing in client?

Look at @Length or the Len function in lotusscript.

If the parameter is a text string, @Length returns the number of characters in the specified string, including spaces and punctuation.

I think you’re going to have to create a button to refresh the count, or something like that. But at least the user can check the count that way.

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Subject: RE: Character counter while typing in client?

If it were a keyword field I believe you could run an onchange event. A dialog list field looks a lot like a non-keyword field if you allow choices not in list and hide the dialog widget.

I don’t think the NotesTimer solution is all that inefficient, though. While the user’s typing, the computer is just mostly waiting around anyway. It should have enough spare cycles to check the length every second or so.

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Subject: RE: Character counter while typing in client?

I was thinking that the timer would be running even when the user was not on the field. But I suppose it could bw started in the Entering event and stopped in the Exiting event of the field.