GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 663671
cell Autocompletion: have a setting for minimum number of characters
Last modified: 2011-11-10 10:11:31 UTC
Trying to switch from Openoffice spreadsheet to GNUmeric, I find autocompletion behavior different and I can't adapted my way. I found prior discussions on this (but no bugs) http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=140988&archive=yes http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnumeric-list/2002-April/msg00044.html http://us.generation-nt.com/answer/bug-242528-gnumeric-autocomplete-does-not-work-help-165050811.html And I second the creation of a preference/setting "Minimum number of characters for autocompletion (-1 to turn it off)" because I think there are situations when you want to do it quick and some when autocompletion should be off/more strict. Thanks
-1 to turn it off? So you would think that 0 or 1 are allowable settings? How would autocompletion on 0 characters look like?
Note that http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnumeric-list/2002-April/msg00044.html requested the ablity to turn off autocompletion. This can be done in the view properties (or in edit->preferences->tools for future views). The issue of http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=140988&archive=yes has been fixed a very very long time in 1.1.16.
I don't really mind the details. I have copied it from link above. If you want to be more precise, I think acceptable effect should be * off (no autocompletion) * n characters, probably restricted between 1 and 8. 0 could be off and above 8 probably makes little sense for making typing faster but why not. 8 is an arbitrary choice of mine which need to be reviewed. 1 was default behavior seen in archive, and is openoffice behavior 4 would be default value (current) It's not a bug about disabling autocompletion, just to customize it the way, each user wants at a given time.
Currently Gnumeric uses a fixed value of 3 (and past discussions make it unlikely that any of the regular developers will spend time making this configurable.)
Ok. thanks for the input, even if not very satisfying ...
Just out of curiosity, if you could configure it which value (number of characters) would you use?
For my current document, 1 because it's the behavior I had with OpenOffice and it's faster. But I agree, efficiency depends a lot on what kind of data you are manipulating, that's why I would say it can change from time to time. I quickly check history but didn't found the bug entry relate to the move from 1 to 3 minimum characters. auto complete code seems here http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnumeric/tree/src/workbook-edit.c?id=69665bb8f1b7c88fb88d91a4dd7936fc25c5209b Need to find where is coming wb->priv->auto_max_size strange. on my ubuntu, source code is in wbc-gtk-edit.c but it's 1.10.13 initial related commit is here http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnumeric/commit/src?id=aa13320638514348376cbeacb3597ba8fb954db0 but I didn't see the minimum character value anywhere. wrong place ?
The bug that changed the require number of characters to 3 was bug #55026. The code of interest is in complete_sheet_search_iteration
This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.
ok. seen your code http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnumeric/commit/src?id=3b31a5f3977883fbe89cb897327588c441478c3d Thanks a lot Andreas :-)