Axel Liljencrantz wrote:
[...]
As to differentiating between non-existing commands and commands that are
a prefix of an existing command, I failt to see when this is useful
information. If you are unsure of it, why not press tab and see all
possible completions?

Here's one scenario in which it could be useful:

You seem to remember that a command starts with 'foss'.  So you type
this in and press tab.  No go... OK, back off a letter and press tab.
Still no go.  Back off one more to 'fo', this time tab gives two
completions: 'foobar' and 'foot'.  Ah, 'foobar' was the one.

Compare with: press 'f' (highlighted as "can complete"), press 'o',
(still highlighted as "can complete"), press 's' (can't complete
anymore, 'fos' highlighted as "error").  OK, back off a letter and
tab-complete.

Savings: one 's' keypress, one backspace and two tabs.  5 keystrokes vs 9.

Another approach is the "remove no-longer matching completions from the
pager as letters are added" idea: using that approach tab would be
pressed immediately after pressing 'f' and the completions would narrow
as 'o' is pressed.

The disadvantage is that the user is possibly presented with a screenful
of information that they must parse (although they could choose to
ignore the information and keep typing until the pager empties, then
press backspace - in this case it's identical to the highlighting
approach except that it requires more display work).  The advantage is
that the user may find a match on the first character if the displayed
matches are less than a screenful.

In scenarios like this the "can complete" highlighting avoids the visual
parsing of the "narrow-down paged completions" idea at the cost of (at
least one) extra key - a backspace.

--
http://members.dodo.com.au/~netocrat



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