Autocomplete while typing

[benjcal]

I might be missing something obvious here but, how can I enable autocomplete as I type without having to press Ctrl+Enter or ^Esc on mac?

I'd like the autocomplete prompt to show after typing 2 or 3 characters. How can I do that?

Thanks!

[snoopy]

I'm not aware of any official way of doing this but the simplest method is probably something like this:

events.connect(events.CHAR_ADDED, function(code)
  textadept.editing.autocomplete('word')
  if buffer:auto_c_active() then return end
  textadept.editing.autocomplete(buffer:get_lexer(true))
end)

This will first try to autocomplete using words from the current buffer and if that fails it will attempt to autocomplete using completions from the language modul (if any).

[orbitalquark]

Snoopy is right that there is no official way of doing this. You can expand on the given solution to include a 2 or 3 character check with something like this: events.connect(events.CHAR_ADDED, function(code) if buffer.current_pos - buffer:word_start_position(buffer.current_pos, true) < 3 then return end if textadept.editing.autocomplete('word') then return end textadept.editing.autocomplete(buffer:get_lexer(true)) end) Note that `textadept.editing.autocomplete()` returns `true` if it succeeded, so we can utilize that.

[eric-hemasystems]

What @snoopy and @orbitalquark have posted is probably a good simple implementation but I just wanted to contribute my own auto-complete functionality in case it is useful to you.

https://github.com/eric1234/.textadept/blob/main/modules/autocomplete.lua

There is also a utility method in that module that is shared among a few modules which is defined here that you will need to copy into the module or load somewhere else:

https://github.com/eric1234/.textadept/blob/main/modules/utilities.lua

The functionality does pop-up as you type but it also does the following:

• Incorporates both word auto-completions and snippets so the same drop-down list has both. Snippet matches happen immediately while word matches wait for at least 3 characters.
• Disables itself in text areas (text documents, comments) where I didn't find it as useful.
• Filters words from comments as I usually want code identifiers not random english from documentation in my auto-complete.
• Some integration between the auto-complete and snippet insert so if you select a snippet it auto-starts the insert.

It's always a work in progress but if there is anything useful there feel free to take what you want.