Re: autocompletion

<quote who="Eivind Tagseth">

> > Slow I don't grok - it keeps up with my typing, and I'm not slow. Noisy,
> > perhaps, but does that warrant removing this affordance?
> 
> I guess your computer isn't as loaded as mine then  :)

(Hrm, well, I must admit that I'm working on my build machine, which is not
exactly slow.)

> > Pressing TAB still works, in addition to the affordance offered by the
> > dropdown (which describes the possible tab-completes). In fact, bash
> > *does* offer this feature, by providing feedback when you press TAB
> > twice with no additional characters.
> 
> Yes, and I have no problems with the dropdown when explititly requesting
> it by pressing tab, it's the 'auto'-part I don't like.  Personally, I
> don't like windows of any kind popping up when I don't request it.

But this window doesn't actually change the behaviour of your input or other
windows. I completely understand disapproval of dangerous dialogues popping
up, or those horrific pop-under windows, but this list is not damaging.

> > Which brings us back to speed - surely the answer to that is "it should
> > be fixed", rather than "let's add a preference to work around the
> > breakage"?
> 
> I don't quite agree.  The question is not if we should get rid of the
> dropdown or not, it's "should we enable it for each and every character
> the user types or just when he/she presses TAB by default?".

If it were limited to TAB, you'd still be reducing the discoverability and
affordance the (currently immediately active) list provides.

I still think the best way to approach this is by fixing the problem, not
working around it. There are no solid disadvantages to the immediately
active list, beyond the speed issues (and possibly even the 'shock' of the
list appearing).

- Jeff

-- 
         "Spend your 'different points' wisely." - Havoc Pennington         


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