UX: cluttered suggestion list when triggering autocomplete on function calls

[ogrisel]

When triggering autocomplete on a function call, the valid signature symbols are

In my experience, I almost never want to autocomplete the name of a builtin function (abs, all, ...) or exception class (ArithmeticError...) when calling a function. I think the keys from the globals dict should be ranked lower in the list of suggestions, after the names inspected from the function signature or the locals dict. This would make jupyter a much more useful tool to interactively discover the API of recently imported Python package.

For comparison, the VS Code notebook editor use a more sensible order where signature argument names and symbol names from locals come first:

The same UX problem was originally reported for IPython under:

• Autocomplete list is cluttered with buitins names ipython/ipython#12344

[krassowski]

I think we should fix this in IPython (ipython/ipython#12344). Would you have time to pick up ipython/ipython#13673 (it needs rebasing and small rewriting to use new ordered=True argument of matcher)?

[andrii-i]

Removed bug label as this is not a bug.
@ogrisel please consider if you would be willing to do what @krassowski suggests and come back to us.

[ogrisel]

Sorry I won't have time to work on this in the foreseeable future.

[JasonWeill]

Resolving this as a duplicate of ipython/ipython#12344. Once this is fixed in ipython, JupyterLab (which depends on ipython) will get the fix.