Autocompletion pop-up makes users instinctively press escape and delete their input unrecoverably

[kangalioo]

While typing, it often happens that the auto-completion pops up and completely blocks my sight of the previous results, preventing me from entering my expression. I instinctively press Escape to dismiss the auto-completion popup, which deletes my input. That is really frustrating, especially because I can’t even recover my input with Ctrl+Z. There are a variety of ways to make this more pleasant:

• Redesign the auto-completion pop-up to not block the sight of the last few results

• Add setting to change the keybinding to delete your input from Escape to something else

  • Alternatively, a setting to disable the Escape keybinding completely. I would rather not have that keybinding at all, than accidentally delete my input every so often

• Allow undoing deletion of input via Ctrl+Z

• If the auto-completion pop-up is visible and the user presses escape, don’t delete the input but dismiss the pop-up instead

I really hope this situation could be improved, as it brings me into quite some rage at times (as it did just now, causing me to create a Bitbucket account just to file this issue). It happens regularly to me, and I’m sure to many others as well, because pressing Escape to dismiss a pop-up is a pretty intuitive action, and having that key bound to such a destructive action is really frustrating.

[Helder Correia]

Hi, @kangalioo . Can you please post a screenshot showing the auto-completion popup blocking the sight of the last results? I need to understand the circumstances that lead to that.

[kangalioo]

I created an artificial example

Before beginning to type my expression: https://imgur.com/sGwCa41

After beginning to type the expression: https://imgur.com/g6LPLib

Also, I noticed that the pop-up only blocks the last few results if the window is near the bottom screen border. I guess my SpeedCrunch instances always opened up in the bottom area of my screen, causing the pop-up to always block my results. Now I know that this is not actually always the case…

Still, even with the pop-up not blocking anything, it is still unwanted in certain situations for some users, which may cause them to press Escape instinctively and delete their input. Especially when you’ve wrote like 30 characters already and then type a for the variable → the pop-up comes up suggesting abs/absdev/ampere/… → you press Escape → the long 30-char formula you painfully constructed operator-for-operator is gone

[Helder Correia]

Even though I asked you about the “auto-completion popup”, for some reason in my mind I visualized the “auto-calc popup”. That said, when I type something that leads to the completion box being displayed, and then press Escape, the box is dismissed and the expression remains intact in the input edit. What is your operating system? If you’re on Windows, can you try out the latest development build from here and see if the issue persists:

https://github.com/Tey/speedcrunch-nightlies/releases

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[kangalioo]

I am on Antergos (Arch) Linux Speedcrunch version is SpeedCrunch 0.12 (Qt 5.11.2)

I’ll try to compile the development branch

[Helder Correia]

Since you are on Linux, best way to try out the latest stuff is either via PPA or building from Git repo source.

[kangalioo]

It’s the same as before for me. On Escape press, the expression input is cleared and the auto-completion box stays, until I press arrow keys or click somewhere

[Helder Correia]

In the about box, what is the version of the Qt framework listed?

[kangalioo]

SpeedCrunch git: Qt 5.13.1

SpeedCrunch Arch repos: Qt 5.11.2

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[Helder Correia]

@Felix Krull Would you know what is going on here? It sounds like a Qt issue in @kangalioo 's specific system.

[Tey']

I'm unable to reproduce that on Ubuntu 19.10 with Qt 5.12.4, so probably not a Qt bug.

@kangalioo Which Arch/Antergos version are you using, with which desktop environment? AFAIK, Antergos is a dead distro but if the issue is due to a specific desktop environment, it might be worth fixing it.

About the autocompletion popup: we should probably add a way to trigger it manually, because always showing it is not that useful and annoying IMHO (and never showing it is a bit strict). The (universal?) CTRL+SPACE combination for autocompletion is already used in SC though.

[kangalioo]

I’m using KDE Plasma. From my system’s about page:

Operating System: Antergos Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 5.17.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.64.0
Qt Version: 5.13.2
Kernel Version: 5.3.13-arch1-1
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 6 × Intel® Core™ i5-8600K CPU @ 3.60GHz
Memory: 15.6 GiB of RAM

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[Helder Correia]

@Tey' I find the automatic completion box very useful, just like in an IDE. However, we should probably make it optional and remap Ctrl+Space to launch it instead of the constants browser.

[Helder Correia]

That said, we should probably remove the ESC mapping from clearing the input box.

[DWelting]

I can confirm this is still an issue on Linux Manjaro (KDE 5.18.4), using Speedcrunch git, QT v5.14.2. And also the package in the official repo.

Escape just clears the input, only clicking the mouse clears the auto-complete as far as i can tell.