One of the new capabilities we’ve added to Editline controls in OpenInsight 10 is Autocompletion.  This is a common feature found in many modern programs where the system attempts to predict a word or sentence that the user is entering without actually typing it in completely.

To enable this the Editline control now supports the following new properties:

  • AUTOCOMPLETEMODE
  • AUTOCOMPLETESOURCE
  • AUTOCOMPLETELIST

AUTOCOMPLETEMODE property

This property specifies if Autocomplete is active, and if so how the suggested string is displayed. It can be one of the following values:

  • “0” – Autocomplete is disabled
  • “1” – Autocomplete is enabled and in “append” mode: the remainder of the suggested string is added to the end of the characters the user has typed in and highlighted.
  • “2” – Autocomplete is enabled and in “suggest” mode:  the system displays a drop-down list of possible matches to what the user is typing.
  • “3” – Autocomplete is enabled and in “suggest-append” mode. This is combination of the previous two modes.

AUTOCOMPLETESOURCE property

This property specifies where the list of possible suggested strings is obtained from.  It can be one of the following values:

  • “0” – Custom List: a list set via the AUTOCOMPLETELIST property
  • “1” – File List: a list of matching file and directory names supplied by Windows
  • “2” – Directory List: a list of matching directory names supplied by Windows
  • “3” – History List: a list of matches against the user’s URL history list
  • “4” – MRU List: a list of matches against the user’s MRU list
  • “5” – Shell List: a list of matches against all objects in the Windows Shell Namespace

AUTOCOMPLETELIST property

This property specifies an @fm-delimited list of suggested strings to use when theAUTOCOMPLETESOURCE property is “0”

Examples:

Autocomplete from a custom list

AUTOCOMPLETESOURCE 0, AUTOCOMPLETEMODE 2

Autocomplete from a file list

AUTOCOMPLETESOURCE 1, AUTOCOMPLETEMODE 3

Autocomplete from URL history

AUTOCOMPLETESOURCE 3, AUTOCOMPLETEMODE 1

(Disclaimer: This article is based on preliminary information and may be subject to change in the final release version of OpenInsight 10).