GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 139663
Configurable autocomplete treshhold
Last modified: 2013-06-05 00:21:48 UTC
[Originally reported as http://bugs.debian.org/242528] From: Helge Kreutzmann <kreutzm@itp.uni-hannover.de> Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2004 10:19:42 +0200 Subject: gnumeric: Autocomplete does not work All gnumeric versions I know of ((pre-)Woody, also testing) had autocomplete, i.e. filling in a value in a column where it was already available would be shown while I typed, e.g. In B4 I have "Spain" when I got to B5 and type "S" gnumeric would offer me (after a brief pause) Spain, where "pain" was highlighted. This no longer happens. I went to "File->Preferences->Various and in "Autocomplete" there is "TRUE" written. I tried to set it to FALSE and then again to TRUE, but this did not help. Restarting gnumeric helped neither, nor switching languaes (C <-> German). Since the online help (yelp) is still broken I cannot research there for info. Later I recognized, that autocomplete works partially, i.e. if I type enough letters (currently 3), e.g. "Spa" then suddenly autocompletion works. If this is indeed a "feature" then please change this bug (or I can do it) to a whishlist bug to restore the old behaviour, which was quite handy: if the completion was wrong, I continued typing until it was right. Now I always have to type at least 3 letters -- which kind of defeats the purpose since I then often typed more than 50& of the word.
> If this is indeed a "feature" then please change this bug (or I can do it) to > a whishlist bug to restore the old behaviour, which was quite handy: if > the completion was wrong, I continued typing until it was right. It is intended as a feature; see http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=140988&archive=yes
From: Helge Kreutzmann <kreutzm@itp.uni-hannover.de> Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2004 17:48:01 +0200 As far as I understand the original bug report, the problem was that in the reported case autocompletion was very dangerous, because of lots of similar texts (here: grades). So IMHO in this case autocompletion should be turned off, not crippled. Also on http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gnumeric-list/2002-April/msg00044.html there was the suggestion of different keys for using autocompletion, something I think is *very* sensible, as I have (seldom) run into this problem as well. The current solution (autocompletion only after 3 characters) is neither fish nor meat. So if I want to type Latin and previously typed Latin Language then I still (always) get "Latin". In my case I have lots of more or less long words, but which are quite different. It is very convenient to only type the first (or first two) for autocompletion. I usualy type slowly and hit right (though as suggested some other key is more sensible) to accept. So sensible quick fix: *Change to the autcompletion entry to "Minimum number of characters for autocompletion (-1 to turn it off)" This would aproximatly yield the current behaviour. Long term goal would be to change the autocompletion-accept-key. This would avoid the clumpsy "escape from autocompletion" mentioned in the gnome-thread.
There was a bug in 1.2.8 that disabled autocomplete in the first workbookview displayed. That bug was fixed at the last minute for 1.2.9. For things like grades autocomplete can be disabled within a single view.
Jody, that seems kind of besides the point of the original report, which was filed against 1.2.6-1. The request is for - user configurability of the number of characters before autocompletion kicks in or alternatively - requiring a specific key to indicate acceptance of an autocompletion suggestion.
Sorry but this is not fixed. User wishes to have configurable auto-completion threshold (i.e. number of characters) as hard-coded value is too high for him. Thanks.