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Use "tab" instead of "down arrow key" to select suggestions
Just like when you use the address bar to input tags for bookmarks and select down to the bookmark you want using tab, it would be useful to be able to do this with Ubiquity too.
For example:
Take the example on the help tutorial, you want to find the weather in Chicago. If you highlight Chicago and hit Ctrl-Space it brings up the Ubiquity bar. Then if you hit w it shows you:
Wikipedia Chicago
weather Chicago
and you have to use the down arrow key (or the mouse) to get to weather Chicago rather than Wikipedia Chicago. If you could just hit tab, and have it move down to weather Chicago, then you could hit enter and off you'd go, rather than having to move your hand away from the main part of the keyboard to use the down arrow key.
The tab method is the way it works for pulling up bookmarks in the address bar, and I think it would be more familiar, and more efficient, to use the same method for Ubiquity.
For example:
Take the example on the help tutorial, you want to find the weather in Chicago. If you highlight Chicago and hit Ctrl-Space it brings up the Ubiquity bar. Then if you hit w it shows you:
Wikipedia Chicago
weather Chicago
and you have to use the down arrow key (or the mouse) to get to weather Chicago rather than Wikipedia Chicago. If you could just hit tab, and have it move down to weather Chicago, then you could hit enter and off you'd go, rather than having to move your hand away from the main part of the keyboard to use the down arrow key.
The tab method is the way it works for pulling up bookmarks in the address bar, and I think it would be more familiar, and more efficient, to use the same method for Ubiquity.
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The company has not planned to implement this.
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There is actually a good discussion of this point on the mailing list here.
Brandon sums up why it works the way it does:
"We want to keep the behavior of tabs doing tab completion, instead of cycling through suggestions. Arrow keys seems like an intuitive way to go up and down between the different suggestions when the tab key is being used for auto-complete. If that doesn't sound right we're open to ideas."
The issue with google not being a top result for "g whatever" or "goog whatever" is a separate bug that should be resolved in the next update of 0.5pre.
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Inappropriate?I think having both would be useful. or if you could do some kind of tab-completion -
Inappropriate?I'll prefer to have TAB for completion. What I would like is a way to edit the suggestions. For example, I underline a text, I open Ubiqiuty and type tr. It offers the translation but I would like to go to the end of the suggestion to add the 'To language". I think that the right arrow would be cool for that.
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I don't think the need to complete the command is needed, since the command is executed if it's the only match of strings in the commands. As an expample :
Int he default install typing "w" gives two options, wikipedia and weather. making the command "wi" only leaves wikipedia, hence you can have a command "wi NASA" which will execute wikipedia with a search for NASA, which is the expected results. completing the command is a "nice to have" since the functionality is not limited.
my 5 cents. -
Inappropriate?i agree about the way to skip to the end of a suggestion, it would be very handy in many situations
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Inappropriate?@bain I think that's a very good point you bring up, the fact that you don't really need the tab (you could hit w then tab, or w then i, each is two keys long), but what happens when this really takes off and you have hundreds of commands? Obviously it would take a lot of commands for it to not narrow down fairly quickly, but what if there were several Google commands or something? If for some reason, 6 commands started with "google ..." and you wanted the 6th one, you would always have to type at least 7 characters if not more to execute the command without moving your hand to the mouse or away from the typing position.
I know I find this when I have multiple bookmarks tagged with the same word, I'll type that tag into the address bar and get 8 results, but for bookmarks it is easy to just tab down to the one you want, AND it also remembers that you used that last and so it puts it at the top of the list for the next time. I think something like that that mimics the address bar and bookmarks would be the way to go.
@H4mm3r I think having something to go to the end of the command would be good too for adding stuff. Right now it looks like you can't even use the mouse to just go to the end since it doesn't actually suggest in the typing space, but only in the preview part.
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I think it would be ok to allow the down arrow also, but that means taking your hand away from the main typing position, when there is an alternative key, that is not being used, that could do the same thing without moving your hand away from the main typing position.
I think both should be options. -
Inappropriate?Since we can see Ubiquity as a way to type command line, this product should look at what do the best shell in order to increase users' productivity. My favourite would be BASH but ZSH is also powerful. I am happy to see place for improvement anyway.
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Inappropriate?This has become even more important in the 0.5 beta now that commands like "g movies" puts "google cars" as the fourth option. Tab is needed! It can be done as we see in bash, but just setting it up like the awesome bar would be good enough. As it is with the arrow keys make Ubiquity hard to use.
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Inappropriate?There is actually a good discussion of this point on the mailing list here.
Brandon sums up why it works the way it does:
"We want to keep the behavior of tabs doing tab completion, instead of cycling through suggestions. Arrow keys seems like an intuitive way to go up and down between the different suggestions when the tab key is being used for auto-complete. If that doesn't sound right we're open to ideas."
The issue with google not being a top result for "g whatever" or "goog whatever" is a separate bug that should be resolved in the next update of 0.5pre.
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But what is auto complete good for? Since I can type Goo and get Google, what benefit is it for me to tab and have the whole word show up?
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Inappropriate?How about using ` or ~ for one or the other? Does anyone ever use them in Ubiquity anyway?
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