Re: Autocompletion



On Sat, 2002-10-05 at 11:48, Ricardo Fernández Pascual wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> The recent thread about a GnomeURIEntry ended without a real conclusion
> about autocompletion.
> 
> I have decided to take Galeon's autocompletion classes, clean them up a
> bit and post them here. I'm looking for a sponsor to add this to LibEgg,
> if there is interest.
> 
> The current code is here:
> http://webs.ono.com/rfp/libegg.autocompletion.tar.gz
> 
> And a patch for the makefiles:
> http://webs.ono.com/rfp/autocompletion.diff
> 
> If there is interest in developing this I'll continue cleaning up the
> code and documenting it. I have written a small README (attached), but I
> don't think that it makes a lot of sense yet.
> 
> I think that having this as part of libgnomeui is a good idea, to avoid
> code duplication and inconsistencies between Galeon, Nautilus... and any
> other Gnome app or component that needs autocompletion (like the future
> file selection dialog).
> 
> The test program provides autcompletions using GnomeVFS.
> 
> I want to hear about any problem with respect to accessibility or
> usability. Also, the api can be improved.

GnuCash also uses autocompletion, and I would like to mention
one of the features of autocompletion in GnuCash that could be
useful to other programs. Specifically, autocompletion of
account names in GnuCash takes advantage of the fact that
accounts have a hierarchical structure. For example, you
might have expense accounts:

  Expenses (top level account for categorization)
  Expenses:Food
  Expenses:Rent

Once autocompletion has matched the 'Expenses:' prefix
after the user has typed a few letters, you might see
the following in the combo box:

Expenses:Food
  ^^^^^^^^^^^ This is autocompleted, and therefore highlited.
              Cursor is just after 'Ex'.

Then, typing ':' will advance the completion to 'Food'

Expenses:Food
         ^^^^  Now typing 'R' will switch to rent

Using the ':' key in this way often means you only have
to type one or two letters of each subaccount.

Sometimes when using Galeon's autocompletion I wish it
could do the same with '.' or '/', although that situation
is complicated by the fact that you might be typing a legal
web address that is not in Galeon's history.

There are other common situations (e.g. entering a file path)
where there is a hierarchical structure in the text being entered
and such autocompletion could be helpful.

dave

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