set <backspace> to remove suggestions first

[257]

much like google chrome's addr bar and qt's autocompletion. there are many more examples. i've discussed this before here:
fish-shell/fish-shell#1419

[hchbaw]

Sorry, I'm not sure what to do with fish-shell/fish-shell#1467 (add most_visited_path; a new suggestion category (see also 1465) ) about "set to remove suggestions first".

[257]

apologies, wrong reference number. i updated the link; the correct link is:
fish-shell/fish-shell#1419

the idea is to have backspace delete suggestion part first in the following sense:
say user has typed 'bar' and there is a suggestion 'FOO' for it. so he sees barFOO completed for him but he hasn't typed the FOO part of it yet and in fact he doesn't want FOO. if fact he is aiming for barBAZ. so he hits backspace; what happens in auto-fu deletes rFOO. so looses the r. he types r one more time but auto-fu again completes to barFOO! and we have an comic loop. there is no way to stop this cycle short of hitting after r in order to stop the completion and then typing BAZ and only then going around and removing the space at the end.

others (qt, google-chrome/safari's address bar) have resolved this by not being intrusive in the sense that backspace will remove FOO from the above example and in doing so it won't interfere with user's typed string. furthermore it will cease to complete for the first char that user is going to send afterwards. that is, program remembers that FOO was rejected (a la backspace) and stops offering it.
also note that nothing of what user has typed gets deleted. if users wants to remove anything from bar he simply has to hit backspace one more time and r gets wiped this time and so on.

[257]

i have updated my comment, this may not be reflected in email version sent out by github. please follow the web version. thanks.