Autocomplete enhancement

[Ryan Williams]

The autocomplete at the moment seems a bit unusable for me. I find it really cumbersome for it to finish the tag instantly, meaning I then have to move my selector right a bunch of times to get past it.

Dreamweaver seems to have an infinitely better approach which is to basically complete the tag as soon as you type </, which then moves your cursor to after the tag. This allows you to carry on typing your code without interruption to move the cursor.

It'd be nice to see this as an option.

[Karlis]

Actually sounds reasonable, what do the others think?

[notuo]

I saw another post like this. Add my vote... Maybe you can add an option on this behavior and choose from the current and the new one.

[parcley]

add a vote for me

maybe offer both styles of code completion in the "preferences" so each user get's to choose which they prefer.

but i like the proposed one here. typing " </ " closes the current tag.

[syrupcore]

I kinda prefer the current way so I'd love for it to be an option.

[fuzzylogic]

I am looking for something else (brackets) but found all these related topics in the process, thought I'd list them here.


http://forums.blumentals.net/viewtopic.php?t=1602
http://forums.blumentals.net/viewtopic.php?t=1864
http://forums.blumentals.net/viewtopic.php?t=2080


I will also add my vote to the list. </ makes good sense, otherwise it needs a mouse click or a lot of keypresses.

on the other hand, since the objection to the closing tag, is basically a navigation issue of having to move past the closing tag. how about implementing something like ALT-(arrow) to move past the tags. this could be efficient and a good alternative to typing </.

[multifarious]

Fuzzylogic: try ctrl+arrow right (twice)

Ctrl+arrow is windows native to move focus between blocks of text, once you get used to it (shouldn't take too long) it'll become second nature. Especially since most, if not all, windows apps adhere to this.. (I picked this up waay back in win3.11 days )

[OmahaJohn]

I think there are some other autocomplete changes I'd like to see made, also, but this is absolutely something that's got my vote

[Gatis]

Actually the closing-tag auto-complete has been developed already and will be available with next version.
You are welcome post the other auto-complete suggestions you mentioned.

[fuzzylogic]

Fuzzylogic: try ctrl+arrow right (twice)

Ctrl+arrow is windows native to move focus between blocks of text, once you get used to it (shouldn't take too long) it'll become second nature. Especially since most, if not all, windows apps adhere to this.. (I picked this up waay back in win3.11 days )

yes, but, ctrl-arrow is also so erratic and quirky and inconsistant between apps, and almost never goes to the place where I am trying to get to, that I don't even bother to use it. so it did not occur to me to try it with this editor, because past experience shows it to not be usable anywhere else.

[multifarious]

erratic and quirky and inconsistant between apps

huh? what kindof apps are you using??
like I said: it's windows native, left/right moves between words, up/dn moves between paragraphs, +shift is a select modifier.
Really, there'll be very few regular apps that'll break this behaviour since, if they do, it's a concious design choice and they'll have to 'break' default windows behaviour. Very few interaction architects will do such a thing, even at gunpoint

However, I DID notice a difference in what some programs considered the start of a 'word'*, but these are on such rare occasions you'll more likely immediately remember for the next time.



*try it in your browser's adress bar.

[fuzzylogic]

However, I DID notice a difference in what some programs considered the start of a 'word'

that is exactly the problem. no consistency is deciding how to handle punctuation and how to define the start of a word.

well, for plain text with periods and commas, there is no problem. but programs are not plain text, they are mostly special characters, brackets and so forth. so my experience is that the cursor almost never ends up where I intend for it to go. Especially try going left to right and then reverse direction, go right to left... and you will see that editors are not even always consistent within themselves.

I too have been using computers since before the days of wfw 3.11.

Hey, if it works for you great!!! I'm just saying that it frustrated me to the point that I do not even consider using it.

P.S. Take a look at this post for an example of the problem I am talking about with erratic CTRL-Arrow selection.... and why I find it unusable. http://forums.blumentals.net/viewtopic.php?t=2982

[joemichaud]

I was just going to post my support for Ryan's suggestion, but it looks like I'm too late!

That's ok, I'm looking forward to using this improvement soon!

[mwb1100]

Am I missing something? I'm trying out 9.0.0.92 and the automatic closing of the HTML tags does not work as per Ryan's suggestion. It's still inserting the full closing tag when the open tag is completed. Is the suggested method of waiting to insert the closing tag until the "</" sequence is typed supposed to be implemented and working? If so, is there an options tweak I need that I can't find?

[llbbl]

I like the idea. should we add a poll to the thread?