Notepad++ v8.2.1 Release
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@Lycan-Thrope I see where you’re coming from, and I may well be in the minority in terms of users who were frustrated by NP++'s original use of ENTER. However, FWIW, the release notes only say that an option was added; there’s nothing to suggest that the default setting of this option actually changes the behaviour from previous releases, and that’s the crux of the whole issue. In fact, even if I follow @peterjones’s suggestion and read the updated auto-completion page, I see two excerpts pertaining to the default behaviour that point to a bug in the current installers:
You accept the suggestion by typing the Enter or Tab key, and the word is completed within your buffer as if you’d typed it all out
This is actually identical to the currently-published doc, so it may have just been an inadvertent oversight by the doc team. However, the other one clearly references changes in the 8.2.1 release:
hitting Tab or Enter key or double-clicking on the choice will select one (though in NPP v8.2.1 and newer, the Tab/Enter is configurable)
The good news is that both of these excerpts are consistent with one another: they both clearly indicate that, by default, both Tab and Enter should insert the active AC selection (i.e. in the Preferences window’s new Auto-Completion options, both TAB and ENTER are checked by default), and that users now have the option to disable one of the keys if they wish.
The bad news is that this is not how quite how the new option referenced in the release notes was actually implemented: when you update to 8.2.1 from a previous version (or install 8.2.1 directly to a system that has never had NP++ installed previously), ENTER is unchecked by default. In fact, if you then manually configure the options to match the documented default, then do an uninstall of NP++, you are asked if you want to keep your custom settings. If you select “yes”, then re-install NP++, the change is remembered.
All things considered, it looks like the developers intended to maintain the default AC keys for the sake of consistency, but inadvertently submitted the incorrect configuration when they implemented the new option.
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You accept the suggestion by typing the Enter or Tab key, and the word is completed within your buffer as if you’d typed it all out
This is actually identical to the currently-published doc, so it may have just been an inadvertent oversight by the doc team. However, the other one clearly references changes in the 8.2.1 release:
That’s a generic introduction which applies to all versions. There isn’t an English language conjunction which means “one or the other, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that both will work at the same time, depending on version or settings”
hitting Tab or Enter key or double-clicking on the choice will select one (though in NPP v8.2.1 and newer, the Tab/Enter is configurable)
The good news is that both of these excerpts are consistent with one another:
IMO, they are.
they both clearly indicate that, by default, both Tab and Enter should insert the active AC selection (i.e. in the Preferences window’s new Auto-Completion options, both TAB and ENTER are checked by default), and that users now have the option to disable one of the keys if they wish.
IMO, they both clearly indicate that one or the other key is possible to work, but the second paragraph goes on to clarify that which of those keys is enabled will be affected by settings. It says nothing about the default setting.
I will have to make it more clear, because the documentation is meant to follow the actual behavior of Notepad++, and if you cannot understand the actual behavior of Notepad++ through my documents, it means I haven’t been clear enough.
The bad news is that this is not how quite how the new option referenced in the release notes was actually implemented: when you update to 8.2.1 from a previous version (or install 8.2.1 directly to a system that has never had NP++ installed previously), ENTER is unchecked by default. In fact, if you then manually configure the options to match the documented default, then do an uninstall of NP++, you are asked if you want to keep your custom settings. If you select “yes”, then re-install NP++, the change is remembered.
That’s because that option didn’t exist prior to 8.2.1, so there was no setting for it. When 8.2.1 installs, it adds the config bit for that setting, to whatever value the developer thought was appropriate – in this case, TAB enabled and ENTER disabled.
All things considered, it looks like the developers intended to maintain the default AC keys for the sake of consistency, but inadvertently submitted the incorrect configuration when they implemented the new option.
That is an incorrect assessment. You quibble over my phrasing in the manual, but I am not a developer, so any discrepancy between my phrasing and the actual behavior is a failing on my part to write the documentation in a way that you understand. Based on all statements by the developer, this was implemented exactly the way it was intended.
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I am in the process of updating the phrasing again. Currently, I plan on the introductory paragraph including the sentence:
You accept the suggestion by typing the completion key (see “Automatic completion”, below), and the word is completed within your buffer as if you’d typed it all out.
… and the detailed paragraph saying:
You can use arrow keys (or the mouse) to navigate through the entries in the popup; hitting the completion key or double-clicking on the choice will select that choice and enter it as if you had just typed the whole word; hitting the
Esckey will exit the auto-completion popup without choosing one of the suggestions. (As of v8.2.1, the default completion key isTab, though you can use preferences to set whether it only acceptsTab, only acceptsEnter, or accepts either as a valid completion key. In v8.2 and earlier, both keys would be accepted as the completion key, without a configuration option to affect it.) -
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@mathlete2 ,
I see your point, also, and as Peter has explained, he will phrase the situation different, and the issue that in that a previous update, it just worked for both, without exclusion of the other. I read the documentation as either or, as I seldom see things being explained that are inclusive of both options, and didn’t realize that it would allow both as that seems to me to be redundant action of overworked keys as it is. :) However, point taken…and have a good day. :)Lee
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Out of curiosity, I looked at the Auto-completion documentation, and it looks like it’s inaccurate:
Notepad++ project is not like the ones in Microsoft or in Apple: all the maintainers are volunteers so our resources are much more restricted. It’s unfair to blame Notepad++ document not accurate. But even under such condition, I ensure you that Notepad++ User Manual Project updates extremely frequently. @PeterJones synchronizes the user manual on every release. On the current state of User Manual, he has done an awesome job.
OTOH, I saw several complains about Auto-completion “regression”, I admit that the “default settings” should be kept while adding the option. The decision was done in the current change because for some users it’s a bug. I should know that we cannot make everyone happy. So if no one thinks it’s not convenient, the default settings will be
ENTER&TABboth enabled in the next release - people who think typing ENTER twice to have one new line is a bug can disableENTERin the option. -
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@donho said in Notepad++ v8.2.1 Release:
It’s unfair to blame Notepad++ document not accurate
To clarify, I wasn’t trying to blame the doc team (not in a guilt-trip sort of manner, anyway). I was just pointing out a (presumably inadvertent) discrepancy between the doc and the current behaviour. In fact, I was doing my best to establish that the discrepancy needed to be sorted out on the dev side, not the doc side.
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@peterjones said in Notepad++ v8.2.1 Release:
It says nothing about the default setting (…) the documentation is meant to follow the actual behavior of Notepad++
In this case, there are specific workflows/keystrokes documented. In general, such descriptions implicitly describe a default behaviour (even if the term “default” isn’t explicitly used).
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@mathlete2 said in Notepad++ v8.2.1 Release:
@peterjones said in Notepad++ v8.2.1 Release:
It says nothing about the default setting (…) the documentation is meant to follow the actual behavior of Notepad++
In this case,
Why are you still fighting this semantic argument?
I have already agreed that some users, including you, were confused by my wording, and I have already been working on updating the documentation to make it clearer to all readers, and now to include the fact that versions after 8.3 will go back to defaulting to Enter + Tab both consumed during auto-completion popup.
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@donho said in Notepad++ v8.2.1 Release:
The decision was done in the current change because for some users it’s a bug.
Well, it was certainly an annoyance for some (many?) users, but as I’ve said before, not all annoyances are “bugs”. Even the annoyed users were acknowledging that the feature was technically working as expected - note that the feature request just wanted more options to work with, not new default settings.
Incidentally, ICYMI from one of my previous comments, there does seem to be an actual bug in the AC menus: exact matches to the current text (which don’t add any new characters when selected) are included as an option. If these options are being included intentionally, and are actually useful in some scenarios, it would be good to offer an option to exclude them.
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@peterjones said in Notepad++ v8.2.1 Release:
Why are you still fighting this semantic argument?
I wasn’t, I was explaining why I was using a term that wasn’t explicitly used in the doc. You didn’t seem to understand why I was using the term “default” (which made sense because the doc excerpts that I was referencing didn’t use it), so I gave an explanation of why it was still an appropriate term to use in this context.
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