https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67826

--- Comment #17 from Mikael <[email protected]> ---
I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I created an account just post
this message.

Some years back I used Open Office, and the auto complete feature there worked
really well. I remember how it was normal to press enter in almost every
sentence and typing was significantly sped up using auto complete. When I
switched to Libre Office, I lost this habit, and I've tried to think about why.
I think there are at least two reasons. 

The first, and I think primary reason, is that Libre Office shows the suggested
completion in a little box above the text, while Open Office was showing the
suggested completion as what it would look like if I would have just continued
typing (only with a different shade). This difference is significant. The eyes
are focusing on where the cursor is, and on the continuation of the line. It's
not at all as easy to switch visual focus to a box above the line. I feel that
it somehow disturbs the visual flow.

The second problem is connected to this bug report, but I think not only that.
I don't know how the completion choice algorithm works, but it seems to be
working pretty badly. It tends to choose weird long strings such as URL:s or
other weird strings it must have seen in some document. But these suggestions
are completely unlikely to be what one is looking for. The choice algorithm
should make some kind of probability estimation, it doesn't even have to be
advanced: The most frequent word with a specific prefix is the most probable
continuation.

Someone mentioned that it is possible to choose between completions with tab or
something, but this would be a useless option. One has to remember that typing
for most of us is already pretty fast. Having to go through alternative
completions would defeat the purpose.

Finally, I believe that these functional weaknesses in how Libre Office
implements auto completion, is the reason that this bug is getting little
attention. Fixing this particular bug isn't enough to make it the valuable
feature that I remember that it was in Open Office. But maybe it would be
possible for Libre Office to look at how auto completion worked in Open Office
and just copy how the feature worked there, because I remember that it was
really good.

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