Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway
From: doug@letni.uucp (Doug Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Number Editing on Telephones
Message-ID: 
Date: 26 Sep 89 20:50:37 GMT
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Reply-To: doug@letni.lawnet.com
Organization: Logic Process  Dallas, Texas.
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X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 415, message 5 of 5

>[Moderator's Note: Aren't cellular phones sort of like this? You punch
>in the entire number, then 'send' it. I assume at any point in the input
>that you discovered a mistake you could cancel it and start over, not
>actually hitting the 'send' button until you were ready to release it.  PT]

You are right. Cellular phones let you enter the number then press the
$pend key. They then broadcast the NAM and phone id stuff on a broadcast
freq, after which the selected cell site passes back the freq pair to use.
Now, the phone number (if there is one) goes out.  All the cel-phones
I have worked with have a button ususally labled "clr" that allows you
to "backspace" one charicter by just touching it once, or the whole
number by holding it down. Unfortunately some of them, like my Motorola 8000x,
have about a quarter second delay after you press the button before they
go into the clear_the_whole_number mode. This is almost too fast and
it takes some getting used to, when you want to backspace just once.

Triva note: DTMF isn't used to send the phone number, even though most
cel-phones echo DTMF sounds while you press the buttons. After a connection is
established, usually the phone will then revert to sending DTMF out as audio.

As far as regular phones, my (I can't believe I'm admitting this) GTE Xt-100e
phone terminal, (vt100 terminal and a telephone built in) lets you backspace
and edit the number before pushing the outgoing line button.  I also
have some off brand two line phone purchased a couple of years ago that
has a <- key which lets you backup a digit.  It too only sends the
entire number after you select an outgoing line. It's problem is that
it only holds 15 digits and dactivates the touch tone pad after the
line select has gone out... Quite a pain on long numbers, I usually have
to program a combination of speed dials into it (which don't deactivate
unless they are used) to reach anybody except direct dial on my primary
LD carrier.

Anyway those keys are rarely used, generally when I make a mistake in
dialing it was on of the first digits of the number and I end up
starting over anyway..


Doug Davis/1030 Pleasant Valley Lane/Arlington/Texas/76015/817-467-3740
{sys1.tandy.com, motown!sys1, uiucuxc!sys1 lawnet, attctc, texbell} letni!doug
 "comp.unix.aix is an oxymoron"