Editline Autocompletion

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

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.

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

This property specifies an @fm-delimited list of suggested strings to use when the AUTOCOMPLETESOURCE property is "0"

Examples:

[caption id="attachment_759" align="aligncenter" width="446"] AUTOCOMPLETESOURCE 0, AUTOCOMPLETEMODE 2[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_760" align="aligncenter" width="446"] AUTOCOMPLETESOURCE 1, AUTOCOMPLETEMODE 3[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_758" align="aligncenter" width="446"] AUTOCOMPLETESOURCE 3, AUTOCOMPLETEMODE 1[/caption]

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

»RTI_Populate_Combo Is this supposed to be documented for our use or is it just the routine RTI uses for the combo puplation functions that are available.

Hi Barry - I don't know if it's _supposed_ to be documented - it's primary purpose is to parse the "FILENAME/FIELD/ID/PROCNAME" command you enter into a combo box Items prompt in the Form Designer and load the list based on that - nothing fancy really (See the help for "Combo Box Properties Dialog Box" for more info on this if you're not familiar with it).

Dear Captain C …

I might have missed it but don't see where an OI file / OI file, record are the source of the autocomplete. There is the OS level file but not OI. Why not?

Dear DSig …

At the moment this is working at the "raw" Windows layer - it is not hooked into the semantic logic layer which is on the Basic+ side of things. That sort of functionality can be introduced later in a similar manner to how it's implemented in combo boxes via RTI_Populate_Combo (which is handled in a promoted CREATE event or Start_Window() - I don't recall which off -hand …)