Larry@sri-unix (07/23/82)
A friend of mine (Mark Matson) designed a graphics editor with a type of command completion I haven't seen discussed here. You can type as much of the command word as you want. The command completion occurs when you type a space or a carriage return. Then it either fills in the rest of the word or else complains. His command set includes a lot of multi-word commands. For example, "Set Origin 45 67" could be typed as just "S O 45 67". With this method, adding new commands can only cause the user to get "ambiguous abbreviation" warnings, not accidentally trigger the wrong command. Also, it allows new users to type the full commands, which are rather mnemonic, instead of having to remember the abbreviations. And, of course, it has the normal advantage of command completion - I always know what I've just done. Larry Seiler -------
mclure@SRI-UNIX@sri-unix (07/24/82)
BBN's mail program HERMES for Tops-20/Tenex and my mail program MU for Unix have had that type of command completion for years.