newRPL: [UPDATED April 27-2017] Firmware for testing available for download

[Helix]

(10-28-2015 01:50 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  

(10-28-2015 12:05 AM)Helix Wrote:  I can understand that you find this feature useful, but if the list will remain incomplete and disordered I'm almost sure that I will never use it. In that case, to answer one of your previous questions, help comments for these commands in the status area is certainly not a priority for me.

I see. The list is not incomplete, it contains all commands currently implemented (is complete as far as newRPL development status is). As new commands are added to libraries, they will automatically "pop-up" in the autocomplete feature.

I'll think about it and see if something like that can be implemented efficiently somehow. The only issue is that it needs to allocate memory for potentially hundreds of suggestions to be able to sort them later. Right now it simply gives the current suggestion to one library and asks for the next one, which requires no memory and is quite fast. Obtaining all suggestions on every keystroke means scanning through all commands in all libraries every time, store them somewhere, then sort. This is CPU and memory consuming. To make things worse, the current text in the command line is at the end of TempOb (for easy growth/shrink). Allocating memory means that text would need to be copied again, which compounds on the CPU/memory issue. You'd be possibly triggering GC's in between keystrokes, and that can degrade the user experience with "hiccups" in the text editor.
While it seems a simple feature, internally is quite complex and it would consume resources much better spent elsewhere. But I'll think about it, perhaps I can find a way.

Don't worry about that. The autocomplete feature is an addition compared to the current RPL behavior, and I lose nothing if there is no alphabetic order. I agree too that the calculator memory and your spare time will be better used in implementing more important features!

The good news is that the autocomplete suggestions give a list of already implemented commands, so I will certainly investigate them.