Re: [Phpwiki-talk] RFE - form autocompletion

[Dan F. <dfr...@cs...>]

Reini Urban wrote:

> just detected this, using google suggest:
>     http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
>
> "RFE - Form Autocompletion"
> http://serversideguy.blogspot.com/2004/12/google-suggest-dissected.html
>
> We'd need a new xml-rpc function to return simple queries in
> javascript src: titlesearch, username, plugins, categories, and such.


This would be awesome.

We have started to use auto-complete textboxes in a couple places in the 
as-yet-unreleased MoonBadger version of WikiLens. (The code is done, but 
our machine is hacked and down until next week or later.) One spot is to 
add buddies (auto-complete username); another spot is to add pages to a 
list (auto-complete lists you own, auto-complete any pagename to add to 
a list). These boxes currently work by generating the complete list 
server-side and embedding it in the page for the Javascript to use (!!). 
Obviously, this does not scale as the number of users or pages grows 
very large.

By the way, I looked around for auto-complete textboxes, and found 2 I like:

1. http://codeproject.com/jscript/jsactb.asp
Pros:
  + I know it and like it
  + Friendly author ("Use it however you like!")
Cons:
  + Inappropriate license for a GPL project. (It uses creative commons 
license, which isn't even for software.)
  + Only uses a local list in Javascript, not server-side.
  + Some quirks, like when you click away from it, it doesn't go away.

2. http://momche.net/publish/article.php?page=acdropdown
Pros:
  + Looks fully featured
    - has both local and remote modes
    - drops down with a scrollbox, which acts more the way people would 
expect-- scrollbar, vanishes when you click away
  + Friendly author ("Use it however you like!")
Cons:
  + I've never actually used it
  + No license at present. I'm trying to convince the author to release 
it under a GPL-compatible license (see 
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses). 
Check it out, email the author to choose a GPL-compatible license, so 
PhpWiki can use it!

Also, I guess there's a 3. I wrote my own that's in MoonBadger. The 
advantage is that I got to skip all the confusing licensing issues. The 
disadvantage is that it is not nearly as fully-featured. I really see it 
as a placeholder until a better GPL solution comes along.

Dan