Autoselect match like autocomplete in completion

[eyvindbjartiandersen]

I searched for this feature because I thought it was implemented, but I guess it's a feature request. Is there a possibility to allow autoselecting the match while typing and effectively narrowing down the search matches at the same time in the completion?. Maybe with ESC to cancel/clear selection?.

[The-Compiler]

I don't understand what you mean. Can you elaborate?

[eyvindbjartiandersen]

For example in Neovims autocompletion you can choose to have the text autoinserted as you type. With Qutebrowser one would need to tab to the match when using :open.

[The-Compiler]

There already is some discussion in that direction in #5177 FWIW. I personally don't like that behavior and the completion handling is already quite complex, so unless others would like that as well, I'd rather not implement both.

@rcorre what's your take on this?

[rcorre]

@eyvindbjartiandersen can you point me at the docs for this neovim setting? I'm having a hard time imagining how it would work for urls. Like, if I just type "g", would it immediately complete to the first url that has a "g" anywhere in it? Or would it just complete the longest unambiguous substring, like "h" would complete up to "http", then "s" would complete through "https://"? The former seems like it would have a lot of false positives, where the latter doesn't sound too useful as I never type the "https://" part when using qute's completion.

Maybe some examples would help us understand the desired behavior better?

[eyvindbjartiandersen]

The easiest way I can explain it is with this gif using Rofi: https://i.imgur.com/3dZUF1O.gif. The request concerns the selection of one entry at all times. This is the normal behaviour for most autocompleting implementations. Of course there'll be some implementation decisions/configuration options for accepting or declining the search match etc.

Rofi for example lets you configure VI style bindings:
! "Clear input line" Set from: XResources
rofi.kb-clear-line: ctrl+l
! "Beginning of line" Set from: Default
! rofi.kb-move-front: Control+a
! "End of line" Set from: Default
! rofi.kb-move-end: Control+e
! "Move back one word" Set from: XResources
rofi.kb-move-word-back: ctrl+n
! "Move forward one word" Set from: XResources
rofi.kb-move-word-forward: ctrl+i
! "Move back one char" Set from: Default
! rofi.kb-move-char-back: Left,Control+b
! "Move forward one char" Set from: Default
! rofi.kb-move-char-forward: Right,Control+f
! "Delete previous word" Set from: Default
! rofi.kb-remove-word-back: Control+Alt+h,Control+BackSpace
! "Delete next word" Set from: Default
! rofi.kb-remove-word-forward: Control+Alt+d
! "Delete next char" Set from: Default
! rofi.kb-remove-char-forward: Delete,Control+d
! "Delete previous char" Set from: Default
! rofi.kb-remove-char-back: BackSpace,Shift+BackSpace,Control+h

Example of how Neovim handles autocomplete and arbitrary text is not an issue: https://i.imgur.com/DunYucx.gif

This could be very neat to have in Qutebrowser IMHO.

[The-Compiler]

I suppose that makes sense for prompts where you will most often want to select one of the given options, not enter free text (like it's case for a list of commands). However, with qutebrowser, for lots of commands (say, :open) you're probably more likely to want what you actually entered, not the first completion. Of course it'd be possible to have something like Mod-Enter to still accept the entered text, but I feel like this makes things more rather than less cumbersome in general.