Re: [Nano-devel] [RFC] Improve nano's completion feature to use external sources of completion

[Benno Schulenberg]

Op 18-05-18 om 17:31 schreef Marco Diego Aurélio Mesquita:
> Judging by https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/2016-12/msg00016.html
> there is interest in an improved version of nano's completion feature
> to include external sources of completion.
> 
> I'd like to improve the current implementation so that we could add
> something like:
> 
>   pletion grep $shard /usr/share/dict/words
> 
> into nanorc

Hm.  You want to run this grep every time the user types ^]?
That seems like a waste of time, and leads to a repetitious
reading of the same file.  Better just let nano read the
relevant file into a special buffer and include that buffer
in the completion search.

> and then, while in nano, type Bras^] and have it completed
> to Brasilia.

You chose a special example: few words begin with "Bras".
But when I use the /usr/share/dict/dutch dictionary, and
try to complete some random word, then in most cases I get
twenty or more results, and cycling through them to get the
right one takes longer than just typing out the wanted word.

So... it would probably be more useful when the user would
include text or code files he or she produced earlier.

> Can I come up with a proof-of-concept patch?

You can.  But no guarantees.

Benno

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