Feature request: a smarter phonebook

Question

Hi,
Today we struggle daily with numerous lists of data on devices: thousands of songs in an mp3 player, or countless emails, or just the files in your computer. And the tools for managing those lists are never good enough. When it comes to phonebooks on mobile phones… well they just do not exist. We have simple and (some times extremely) long list of names with a lot of information under those names. And all you have is ascending order and simple search by name. Also SOME phones have “categories” view in their phonebook. It is usually hidden under 4 levels of menus. And if you want to jump between categories, you have to always go back, scroll down to the next category and select it. The inconveniences are unbearable, so I have a couple of wishes.
I would like to easily go to categories view and switch between categories with just one key press.
Also I would like to have an option that makes the phonebook remember what the last selected item was. When the phonebook is opened again it should select that item. And I would really want this to work in categories as well.
As you can see these are simple features that can be added to the existing interface.
Thank you.
The best way to explain what I need is to point you to an already existing product.
Probably no one here ever used an Alcatel phone or specifically OT535/735. This phone has an amazingly simple and easy to use phonebook. I'll explain how it works for those who never used it. On the top you see tabs with categories names and below - the list of names in that category. The first two tabs are “All in SIM” and “All in phone”. The rest are all the custom categories and 2-3 predefined like “personal”, “professional”. The navigation is as simple as moving the joystick left and right to change category and up and down to change the selected item in the list. Every time you close and open the phonebook you see exactly the last open category and the last selected item. When you change the category again you see the last selected item in that category. Of course like any other phone you can search in lists by typing letters and when you open an item you can see everything ordered in tabs like “names”, “numbers”, “emails” etc.
Regards,
DeyanMessage Edited by dixonbg on 08-Dec-2006
12:45 AM
Message Edited by dixonbg on 08-Dec-2006
12:45 AM
Message Edited by dixonbg on 08-Dec-2006
12:46 AM

Answer 1

Answer: set allow_newlines = true in edit_field, e.g.
vf:edit_field {
     allow_newlines = true,
Enter/return key will then have the effect hoped for: a newline instead of OK'ing the dialog box.
PS - credit to John Ellis for informing me/us of this undocumented feature.