Currently, forms allow text to be entered into numeric fields. Although the text will not be stored in the numeric field (it will store a 0), text should not be allowed to be entered into the form. There should be an error message. Currently this allows incomplete / messy data in the objects.
Specs seem to indicate that a number input must be a number ... and of course disagreements exist. (I haven't checked) but maybe Knack should represent number inputs as 'type = number' as a hint to the browser.
from: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input/number
<input type="number"> elements can help simplify your work when building the user interface and logic for entering numbers into a form. When you create a number input with the proper type value, number, you get automatic validation that the entered text is a number, and usually a set of up and down buttons to step the value up and down.
Important: Bear in mind that logically you should not be able to enter characters inside a number input other than numbers. There seems to be some disagreement about this among browsers; see bug 1398528.
I agree. This is actually dangerous because it can corrupt critical data.
I had to use Javascript to code protection against non-numeric characters being typed in a form.
But did not find a solution yet, covering inline data editing in a table.