Re: [Usability] GtkEntryCompletion: Popup Completion Window on Paste?

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

On Mon, 2005-02-07 at 11:33 +0100, Christian Neumair wrote:
> My use-case is that I quiet often see an URI that isn't a link (or have
> it in a text file), and I want to open it in nautilus, or I simply want
> to use the built-in search mechanism to look up a word in a dictionary.
> So I press ctrl-N in an existing nautilus window (or click the Ephy
> launcher) and paste the URI into the blank address bar of a new window.
> My problem is that I have to insert a new character and delete it again
> to make Ephy popup the completion window - and I need the window if I
> want to select among the available search engines.
> 
> Matthias Clasen rejected this request, argueing that users complained
> and he once discussed it with Seth who suggested to not popup on paste.
> 
> Comments, anybody?

I can see how this could be potentially useful for pasting _words_, but
isn't it completely redundant for pasting URIs? Why do you need to
complete or select a search engine for a working URI. And pasting URIs
is certainly more common than using Epiphany as a replacement for
gnome-dict I would assume, so that's probably why it was disabled by
default. It is a good question however, how to bring up the completion
popup without deleting some chars first...
Thinking about it, the problem seems to be that the completion popup is
usually used for _completing_ text and you rarely need to complete what
you are pasting. In Epiphany's case however, the popup is also used to
let you _select_ between different methods to handle the text (selecting
search engines), which occasionally can be useful/required after pasting
text. Maybe the most sane option would be to bring back the arrow button
(as much as I dislike it) to show at least the possible search
engines/smart bookmarks. Or special case this situation and always show
the popup for search engines after pasting. If both is not desired,
maybe at least a hidden key combination could be added to bring up the
popup (something like shift+downarrow).

-- 
Daniel Borgmann <spark mayl de>