Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!esosun!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!its63b!simon
From: simon@its63b.ed.ac.uk (ECSC68 S Brown CS)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: completion
Message-ID: <874@its63b.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 10 Jan 88 23:41:35 GMT
References: <1971@cup.portal.com> <1169@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <9827@mimsy.UUCP> <535@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Reply-To: simon@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Simon Brown)
Organization: LFCS, University of Edinburgh
Lines: 28

In article <535@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> ralphw@TEMP.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU (Ralph Hyre) writes:
>It's interesting to thinkg about completion interacting with a
>spelling-correcting (DWIM, type 'sl' and you get 'ls') front-end.

I guess that a completion would have to be a lot more intelligent - in addition
to adding extra stuff on the end, it could change stuff already typed to get
a "better match". Of course, you might well like it to change some of the
already-typed data even though this is in fact already a "valid" initial part
of a word, because it's not one you use at all often. So, you really need
*all* the exciting user-interface toys to interact with each other for maximum
affect - hopefully in a programmable way so that you can define in advance the
various inter-relations between them. A Really Good interface would have 
completion, alternatives-listing, history, job-control, windows, help, DWIM,
etc... all mixed up together, rather than existing as completely separate
abstractions - but without losing any structure.

	--Simon.

-- 
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| Simon Brown                                    |
| Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science |
| Department of Computer Science                 |
| University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.         |
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