Ah yes! Thank you for making me aware of that setting.
I had it set to “Manually”. (This must have been the default as I have no recollection of deliberately choosing that setting.)
I’ve just now tested both settings (Automatically and Manually) and have come to understand the difference in list behaviour upon toggling a checkbox.
In the shopping list application it is desirable for the sequence of items in the check-list to never be changed upon toggling a checkbox — e.g. the same list (in the same order) gets reused from one day to the next
I can well imagine why another user with more of a “To Do” list focus might prefer the Automatically setting. (mmMmm … this makes me wonder if it might be possible to specify a different behaviour in one shopping-list note than in another to-do-list note … however, I digress!)
Having now understood the different list behaviour for the two different settings …
With “Manually” setting; I can now see that what I can best describe as “the stealing of focus” only happens when the previous line of interaction is off-screen.
I tested this with a twenty-five line checklist … i.e. long enough for one end of the list to become off-screen.
Whenever the previous line of interaction remains visible on-screen the act of toggling a checkbox on some different line in the list causes the blinking cursor to jump to the end of that newly targeted (i.e. current) line. I think this behaviour is both intuitive and desirable.
If however, the previous line of interaction is off-screen when the checkbox on some different line is toggled then the Notes app scrolls away to a different part of the list but does not show a blinking cursor.
I think it is the combination of the absence of that blinking cursor and the sudden scroll-away from the current line of focus that I find disorienting. Remember that this is only a problem when a list is longer than one screen – that is about ten lines of text (above the keyboard) or twenty lines of text (without the keyboard) at the font size I am using.
I suggest that it is preferable for the behaviour to be consistent with that noticed whenever the previously edited line is still visible on-screen — i.e. shift the blinking cursor to the end of the currently selected/interacted line in the list
At the present time, an expedient workaround (that I can come up with) is to remember to first tap within the text of the newly targeted line before toggling the checkbox on that newly targeted line. This may be a little clumsy but it does avoid the disorientation.
I hope the above helps some other user feeling as disoriented as I was feeling.
