795847 - GCLI should use CTRL-TAB to complete unambiguous-prefixes

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(DevTools Graveyard :: Graphic Commandline and Toolbar, defect)

Description

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

TAB could remain for ambiguous-best-guesses.

It seems to me that unambiguous-prefix completion is a sweet spot of simplicity and usability in cases like file-systems to allow people to navigate using TAB as a 'fill-in-what-you-can' key.

On the other hand with more completion smarts, it is likely that we can provide faster completion (i.e with less key presses) using a combination of fuzzy matching, and historical learning. i.e. awesome-complete.

Also I want to avoid the zsh problem of death by a million options.

Currently we don't have awesome-complete and also unambiguous-prefix completion is both useful in some cases, and desirable from a muscle memory pov.

So I suggest we use SHIFT-TAB for unambiguous-prefix completion.

Comment 1

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

New component triage. Filter on "Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce"

Comment 2

[Tyrone Chong]

Hey Joe Walker,

Can I take on this task? So I can use this for my school project. We need to submit a fix and get approved to get full credit. Is there also an active developer for guidance?

Comment 3

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

Thanks Tyrone, I'll assign it to you, and I can help you make progress.

You'll need to checkout GCLI from its repo [1]. The files in Firefox are built from there.
It's worth reading the documentation which is mostly on Github [2], but there are also docs on MDN [3].

GCLI is in the process of adding asynchronous types, which changes how the internals work a bit. So I suggest working off the asynctypes-685526 branch [4].

inputter.js [5] and specifically onKeyUp() on line 491 are responsible for handling TAB, so we'll need to alter this code to call requisition.complete(), line 517 with a flag to indicate use of CTRL.

BTW: I think we should be using CTRL+TAB for this key sequence to get as far away from TAB (and SHIFT+TAB) being used for focus control, and I've changed the title of this bug to reflect that.

cli.js [6] contains the definition of requisition.complete() - line 741. We'll need to check to see if the flag is set and work out an unambiguous-prefix to use for completion rather than the first match.

I hope that helps.

[1] https://github.com/joewalker/gcli/
[2] https://github.com/joewalker/gcli/blob/master/docs/index.md
[3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/GCLI
[4] https://github.com/joewalker/gcli/tree/asynctypes-685526
[5] https://github.com/joewalker/gcli/blob/asynctypes-685526/lib/gcli/ui/inputter.js#L491
[6] https://github.com/joewalker/gcli/blob/asynctypes-685526/lib/gcli/cli.js

Comment 4

[Tyrone Chong]

Ok sounds good I switched to 'asynctypes-685526' branch. is there any process you want me to follow? or just do a regular add, commit, and push?

Comment 5

[Tyrone Chong]

I'm getting this error when trying to run the gcli js for node to run it. Master is working fine. did someone check in bad code?

Error: Calling node's require("util/legacy") failed with error: Error: Cannot find module 'util/legacy'
    at requirejsVars.nodeLoad.req.load (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:2285:27)
    at req.execCb (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:1873:25)
    at execManager (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:541:27)
    at main (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:944:17)
    at callDefMain (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:955:18)
    at Object.context.completeLoad (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:1530:21)
    at requirejsVars.nodeLoad.req.load (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:2295:17)
    at resume (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:1281:65)
    at Object.context.completeLoad (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:1550:17)
    at Function.requirejsVars.nodeLoad.req.load (/repo/gcli/scripts/r.js:2295:17)

Comment 6

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

Ah, sorry. Fix pushed.

Comment 7

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

(In reply to Tyrone Chong from comment #4)
> Ok sounds good I switched to 'asynctypes-685526' branch. is there any
> process you want me to follow? or just do a regular add, commit, and push?

There are some notes at https://github.com/joewalker/gcli/blob/master/docs/developing-gcli.md on creating commits.
Thanks.

Comment 8

[Tyrone Chong]

Thanks Joe. I was able to build that branch i'll be working on this. I'll let you know if i run into any issues

Comment 9

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

Triage. Filter on Lobster Thermidor.
Nice idea, but no need to keep on file.