Re: Compose window - to address entry wierdness.

[Ian Campbell <ijc25 cam ac uk>]

> > Has anyone considered the way galeon does it (it is optional in galeon),
> > if
> > you press tab then a popup window appears which contains all possible
> > completions and you may use Up and Down to select the one you want, this
> > way there is no munging with the content of the edit box, typeing simply
> > works as normal, but will reduce the number of options in the drop down.
> 
> The main problem for me is a drop-down window appearing (flashing really)
> in widely different sizes while I type.  This can be avoided by using a
> small delay - and maybe a keystroke can force it to pop up now.
> 
> An alternative is the way Netscape does (or did) completion in the
> Composer.  Type "bob" and press ^K - if it matches you get
> "bob (Bob Jones <bob@jones.com>)".  The text between () is highlighted.
> This avoids the flashing, but you can only see one address at a time.
> It might be faster on LDAP, since you can respond as soon as you get
> the first address from the server.
> 

Hmm that is nice too. As a slight aside, I think it would be better to
subclass the GtkText, so we can overide the drawing commands so we can
separate out the "actual" text and "completed" text in to separate
entities. This would save an awful lot of the munging we do at the moment 
to remeber this stuff, I reckon (?)

> Both methods seperate user input from expanded output, until you accept.
> That definitely makes the job a lot easier, and maybe more intuitive.
> 
> The drop-down method has been suggested multiple times, so it may be
> a nice feature for a lot of people.  In KDE you can select the type
> of auto-completion to some extent - it offers me "none, semi, and auto".
> Is there a preference?  Do I really need to download and look
> at the Galeon source? :)

Ian