history popup occluded by suggestion popup

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. begin typing a command
2. type Ctrl-R quickly to get the history popup
3. after a few moments, the smaller popup (suggesting Ctrl-R and Tab with 
the most recent shown for each) will appear, over the top of the history 
popup.  The history popup still has focus, but the bottom cannot be seen 
anymore.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

0.721

Original issue reported on code.google.com by qu...@sparq.org on 26 Mar 2008 at 7:59

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The "suggestion popup" (for Ctrl-R and Tab activities) is awkward.

1) It occludes any window that is up already (the history list, the builtin 
error 
window)

2) Because of this, it slows down usage.  I start typing a command and then 
want to 
recall that command from the history, but I have to stop and wait until the 
suggestion window pops up so that I can continue without it hiding things.

The display of a single item for each of Tab and Ctrl-R selections doesn't seem 
to 
be useful: there's no apparent way to say "yes, I want that most recent 
selection" 
without getting the full popup window anyhow.  So showing the most recent 
selection 
doesn't seem to help much.

Getting rid of the display of the most recent item reduces this popup to 
basically 
advising "Hit Tab for auto-completions or Ctrl-R for recent matching commands", 
which is a one-liner that could fit on a status bar instead (if one were to be 
supplied).  This would do away with the "suggestion popup" and would be one way 
to 
solve the above issues.  Just one possible direction for a solution.

Original comment by qu...@sparq.org on 26 Mar 2008 at 6:39

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Yeah, you might be right that just doing away with the suggestion would be the 
right
thing.

What I do want though is to help people learn that they *can* hit Ctrl-R, and 
when to
use it.  After observing a number of less-experienced people use bash in a 
terminal,
I realized that few of them knew about Ctrl-R.

Probably the best approach is to use more of an integrated learn-as-you-go 
tutorial;
the first few times you might get a popup saying "Try Ctrl-R now", but after 
that it
wouldn't appear.

Original comment by cgwalt...@gmail.com on 29 Mar 2008 at 2:03

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Another way of achieving this would be to have the behaviour controlled by the
preferences.  By default the pop up would appear (so new folk learn how to 
access
history and search history) but this can be disabled from a tick box in the 
preferences.

Original comment by dmi...@gmail.com on 4 Apr 2008 at 8:07