XML autocompletion has the potential to be very helpful, but right now it
seems to get in the way more than it helps. Is there any way to customize
it at all?
Right now, the two most annoying problems with auto-complete are:
1) Starting an element - It picks an element automatically when you type
":".
example: I want to enter a "<xs:group>" tag. If I type "<xs:", then when I
type the colon Idea autocompletes the tag name with the alphabetically first
tag in that namespace. In order to get it to work like I want I have to
type "<xs" then hit CTRL-space to get both a colon and the popup list of
choices. I should be able to type "<xs:gr" and have the list of possible
choices narrow down as I complete more and more of the tag name.
2) Closing an element -
a) A trailing space will pop up another optional attribute when I was
about to type "/>".
b) When I try to type "/>", the "/" closes the element and I end up with
"/>>"
c) It is very awkward to add a body to an element - example:
In my document I have '<xs:attribute name="fred" type="mytype"/>' and I want
to insert something in the body.
If I delete the last "/", move my cursor to the end of the line, press
ENTER, then type "</" to make a matching end tag, Idea will auto-complete
(auto-mistreat) it to "<xs:annotation/>". This makes it very hard to edit
this document. I have to be careful to type the name of a closing element
without any angle brackets then move the cursor back and insert them later
or it will insert the wrong thing.
In general I think that the auto-completion feature should take a clue from
the Hippocratic oath - "above all do no harm". I should be able to type any
valid XML directly without having the editor change it out from under me.
It's great for it to make suggestions (ignorable) along the way, but I
should still be able to type exactly what I want.
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