[Circle-dev] Tab-complete in frontends

[Alastair Douglas]

2009/3/18 Paul LeoNerd Evans <leonerd at leonerd.org.uk>:
>
> That was roughly where I was aiming, possibly via some laziness. Perhaps
> roundtrip is "good enough" to lazily populate the options to a command
> the first time the command's name gets completed?
>

This conversation is circling the word 'cache', which makes the thin,
dumb client no longer a) thin or b) dumb.

How much thin and dumbness are we prepared to sacrifice?
Tab-completion is such a commonly-used function of thicker clients
that it would be folly to omit it, but as you say, we can't poll the
server to answer the request every time you press tab.

Perhaps we could add another tab press to it, similar to the
double-tab that shows you a list of options. First tab = I want to
tab-complete; Second tab = I mean it; Third tab = show me the options.

That could be an option. Extra tab-complete tab y/n