auto-complete only if the word is much longer than what you typed

[Victorel Petrovich]

Hi all,
here’s an idea for a different behaviour for auto-completion, and I’d like to see if it resonates with you.

Say, you have set your Auto-completion to pop-up from 3rd character and say you intend to type “foos” - a word that you typed before. Thus, after typing “foo”, it pops-up with suggestion for “foos” but the suggestion is useless, as it’s already easier for you to type by yourself “s”.

Thus, could a better pop-up trigger be based not just on how many chars you’ve typed so far, but also on how many characters, at minimum, are left till the end of the word ?
In the example above, you’d set this to at least 2 chars.

[Lycan Thrope]

@Victorel-Petrovich ,
Law of diminishing returns, I’m afraid would be my answer to your inquiry.

I have mine set to 1. That way, the minute I type one character, I’ve got options and can select the needed word, saving me having to type 3 letters. If this is too quick, then set it for 2 characters, and it will have a better idea of what your intended target will be. By the same token, you’ve just lost the ability to have the word in as a selectable word, because you’ve just typed both letters.

The best option, is 1. After that, you’re fighting a losing battle for efficiency based on the word length. That being said, you have the option to select up to 9 characters.

Depending on your use of the Auto Complete feature, of using only keywords, words already typed in the document, or both, you may find yourself overloaded with options that if you are a touch typist, like myself, would be a waste of your energy and time to even bother with autocompletion as you’d be hitting the chosen hot key as much as any other key stroke you’re trying to save yourself from hitting.

YMMV.

[Victorel Petrovich]

@Lycan-Thrope said in auto-complete only if the word is much longer than what you typed:

If this is too quick, then set it for 2 characters, and it will have a better idea of what your intended target will be. By the same token, you’ve just lost the ability to have the word in as a selectable word, because you’ve just typed both letters.

What “loss” is that if selecting the word “in” would be at least as much effort as typing it yourself (depending on whether in pop-up list “in” is actually selected) ?

would be a waste of your energy and time to even bother with autocompletion as you’d be hitting the chosen hot key as much as any other key stroke you’re trying to save yourself from hitting.

So the point of my idea is that to make it worthwhile for that pop-up to show up (distracting you a bit) and to hit the Tab (or other key) for selection. One way to gain efficiency then is to only have that popup and press that key IF it saves you more in typed characters.

[PeterJones]

@Victorel-Petrovich ,

FYI, as per our Feature Request FAQ, if you post an idea for a feature request in the Community Forum, what you will get is discussion about that idea, and part of discussion is that others in the Community of Notepad++ users might disagree with your idea, or might point out technical difficulties or shortcomings of an idea – that is part of “discussion”.

That said, as the FAQ points out, the users in this Community are not the decision makers for features; if you want to suggest a feature to the Developer, the FAQ makes it clear where the Issues tracker is (it’s not here).

Regarding your idea: as long as it’s an option, not a requirement, I’d have no problem with it existing. But be forewarned, the Developer doesn’t like adding new preferences if he doesn’t see the benefit, so there’s a good chance your idea will not be acted upon, or maybe even outright rejected. (You can try to make a calm expression of the reasons you think the addition would be a good idea, but I would recommend not getting too defensive/argumentative if the Developer responds, as being combatative is likely to guarantee the feature would never get implemented.)

[Victorel Petrovich]

@PeterJones Hello Peter, I’ve read that FAQ (I’ve been around here several years ago).
I don’t mind at all if some people disagree with my idea; me replying to his mild disagreement is also part of discussion.
Do you find my reply a bit too argumentative? Let me know.

Yes, I’m aware that this discussion is just that.
But for to have a small chance that his majesty the Developer agrees with this (or other feature request proposal), I believe at least other people, ideally a majority, need to see it as a very useful feature.

How are you doing? Still keeping tabs on this community like before ? :)

[PeterJones]

@Victorel-Petrovich said in auto-complete only if the word is much longer than what you typed:

@PeterJones Hello Peter, I’ve read that FAQ (I’ve been around here several years ago).

Sorry, I didn’t immediately recognize your name. (In my defense, it had been a few years gap before your recent couple of posts). :-)

How are you doing? Still keeping tabs on this community like before ? :)

I apparently have nothing better to do. ;-)

Do you find my reply a bit too argumentative? Let me know.

It seemed to be leaning that way, at least in my first read, but maybe I over-interpreted it.

I believe at least other people, ideally a majority, need to see it as a very useful feature.

Like I said, I can see how it might be useful, but I am unsure that I’d use it myself, long term. When I am just one letter away from the word I want, I will probably have finished typing it before the auto-completion has more than just popped up, anyway. (I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with auto-completion, especially when I hit the TAB key trying to actually get a tab, in apps that use that key, or hit ENTER at the end of a header line, in apps that use that key; I do like that N++ allows me to customize which of those keys chooses an auto-completion, but since other apps don’t get me the choice, I still always seem to get a word completed in at least one app when I was trying for just the tab or newline. Oh, sorry for the rant.)

Anyway, I’ve just learned to keep typing, if I only have the one or two more characters to go, and seeing the popup doesn’t bother me that much in those circumstances. And I don’t know if you know about it (I don’t know how many of N++'s “recent” features you’ve paid attention to: item 9 in v8.5 from 2023), but Settings > Preferences > Auto-Completion > Make auto-completion list brief at least helps trim out words that are no longer valid, so that reduces the length of the distractive list when you’re close to done typing it (so having typed ex, it might show exit extern, but once you type the i, it will eliminate extern): that makes it more usable and less distracting, IMO.

So if you think you need a majority thinking it’s “very useful”, you probably don’t have my vote. But I could see how it might be useful to people who are even more annoyed by auto-completion than I am; and, as I said, it wouldn’t bother me if it existed. (And if it did, I might even give it a try, since I’m now curious whether it would help me with my love/hate balance.)

[Victorel Petrovich]

@PeterJones said in auto-complete only if the word is much longer than what you typed:

I apparently have nothing better to do. ;-)

Haha, that’s a good one :) . It must be an important part of your life, by now.

It seemed to be leaning that way, at least in my first read, but maybe I over-interpreted it.

It could be; I have focused exclusively on the parts of disagreement; the quotes “” could be misinterpreted as criticism. I need to remind myself to add a few small-talk words here and there and adopt more of “let them disagree…” mentality.

When I am just one letter away from the word I want, I will probably have finished typing it before the auto-completion has more than just popped up, anyway.

Yes, that’s the scenario that gave me the idea. To reduce the visual distraction.

I do like that N++ allows me to customize which of those keys chooses an auto-completion, but since other apps don’t get me the choice, I still always seem to get a word completed in at least one app when I was trying for just the tab or newline.

One thing that may help with that is to have more choices of keys for that “Insert Selection”. I might use “shift+enter”. To accomodate many choices, perhaps it were better customized via Menu/Settings/Shortcut Mapper.

Alternatively, perhaps it could be made so that the pre-selected word in the pop-up list is greyed out/ partially selected, so that you’d press “arrow-up/down” once to actually select it (confirm selection) then either “enter”/“tab” or another “arrow up/down” to select a different entry

Oh, sorry for the rant.)

Rants are good! :D Often only this way we find out what people really think and that a change is needed.

Settings > Preferences > Auto-Completion > Make auto-completion list brief at least helps trim out words that are no longer valid, so that reduces the length of the distractive list when you’re close to done typing it (so having typed ex, it might show exit extern, but once you type the i, it will eliminate extern)

Thanks for the tip, I didn’t know that.

I’m not that hung-on on this idea. It was like a bulb lighting up this morning in my head and got curious what people think !
@donho , do you use auto-completion much?