Command completion in 0.5

[Timur Izhbulatov]

Hi list,

Recently I've updated to the latest 0.5 beta and noticed a very
significant change in the command completion.

Previously, to start a Google search I would just invoke Ubiquity,
type 'goo' or even just 'go', then press Tab to complete the command,
enter the query and press Enter.

But now, even when I've already typed 'goo', the first item in the
suggestions lists is 'add to google calendar' and I can't just press
Tab to cycle over suggestions and choose 'google'. I'm forced to use
arrow keys instead.

In my opinion, this greatly reduces Ubiquity's usability and I would
like to know if there is a way to change this behaviour.

Thanks,
--
Timur Izhbulatov — www.timka.org

["mitcho (Michael 芳貴 Erlewine)"]

The tab completion is a feature we hope to keep, but unfortunately as
you've discovered it is only functioning in limited circumstances
right now. However, in my testing the tab completion of command names
only should be working. If this is not the case for you, I'd love to
know. If the first suggestion is not the right verb you want, you can
arrow down to the righ verb and tab that one.

mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine)

On Jun 26, 2009, at 6:56 PM, Timur Izhbulatov <timo...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Brandon Pung]

So it sounds like there are two things you were asking about here. First is that "goo" is returning "add to google calender" as the top suggestion instead of the verb "Google (search term)", when you would expect "Google (search term)" to be the top choice. Your second concern is that you can't tab to cycle through the suggestions.

For your first thing: I agree that "go" should have "Google (search term)" as the top suggestion. It seems to be a problem with case sensitivity. If you type "Go" then "Google (search term)" will be the top suggestion (at least it is for me). In fact, even just "G" is giving "Google" as the top choice, which is good. So we should make sure our matching to verbs is not being done with case senstivity, because I don't think it should care about the case of the letters here. Good catch!

For the second thing: We want to keep the behavior of tabs doing tab completion, instead of cycling through suggestions. Arrow keys seems like an intuitive way to go up and down between the different suggestions when the tab key is being used for auto-complete. If that doesn't sound right we're open to ideas.

Thanks!

-Brandon

2009/6/26 "mitcho (Michael 芳貴 Erlewine <mit...@mitcho.com>

--
Brandon James Pung
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Class of 2010
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
828.777.8640 | bp...@mit.edu

[Timur Izhbulatov]

2009/6/27 Brandon Pung <bp...@mit.edu>:

> So it sounds like there are two things you were asking about here. First is
> that "goo" is returning "add to google calender" as the top suggestion
> instead of the verb "Google (search term)", when you would expect "Google
> (search term)" to be the top choice. Your second concern is that you can't
> tab to cycle through the suggestions.
>
> For your first thing: I agree that "go" should have "Google (search term)"
> as the top suggestion. It seems to be a problem with case sensitivity. If
> you type "Go" then "Google (search term)" will be the top suggestion (at
> least it is for me). In fact, even just "G" is giving "Google" as the top
> choice, which is good. So we should make sure our matching to verbs is not
> being done with case senstivity, because I don't think it should care about
> the case of the letters here. Good catch!

Hm... I have "google" in the suggestions, not "Google".

Unfortunately, now I can't reproduce my issue with calendar reliably.
However, there are some things that I noticed:
* the problem appeared right after update
* there was only one browser window with many tabs
* there problem disappeared in new window

I also tried unsubscribe/subscribe on the calendar command feed and
restarting the browser, but it didn't help to reproduce the problem.

> For the second thing: We want to keep the behavior of tabs doing tab
> completion, instead of cycling through suggestions. Arrow keys seems like an
> intuitive way to go up and down between the different suggestions when the
> tab key is being used for auto-complete. If that doesn't sound right we're
> open to ideas.

Thanks for the explanation. Now I agree that tab completion and
choosing from suggestions are different actions. I never had to cycle
through suggestions before I stumbled upon this issue. The problem was
that I got stuck at the top choice and completion didn't help to get
out, plus, the list of suggestions was rather odd. However, I
personally would prefer Ctrl+N/Ctrl+P instead of arrow keys.

So, I think the main issue is the list of suggestions, which seems
rather confusing sometimes. For instance, when I type 'g', the 'get
weather' is the top suggestion and Tab does not change anything, so
that I have only what I already typed in the command line. But when I
type 'ge', 'search with Ubuntu Package Search' (one of my search
engines) is on the top and Tab changes my 'ge' to 'Ubuntu Package
Search'.

--
Timur Izhbulatov — www.timka.org

[palousegeo]

I've found the same situation on WinXP. I've had a bit more luck using
"s" (for search), but I miss doing "g tab" search term. When I tried
"Google", search wasn't even one of the options.

-Rick

> >> On Jun 26, 2009, at 6:56 PM, Timur Izhbulatov <timoc...@gmail.com>

[Jono DiCarlo]

I'm pretty sure that Google not being suggested is because of the case-
sensitivity bug. (See http://groups.google.com/group/ubiquity-firefox/browse_thread/thread/489b382eb420a265
)
We have a fix for this bug already, and it will be included in the
final version of 0.5 to be released this week, so "g" or "go" will
once again complete to "google".

Timur, your suggestion about Ctrl-N and Ctrl-P is very interesting.
You must be an Emacs user, right? I am to, and I often find myself
trying to use ctrl-N and ctrl-P in other applications... I think we
could consider adding those as an equivalent to the up-arrow /down-
arrow keys; it would be a benefit for Emacs users and it wouldn't hurt
anybody else.

But back to the main question: there are definitely a few questionable
rankings making it in to the suggestion list with the new parser. We
may have to tweak some of the weights of the various factors that go
into sorting the suggestion list. We should start a conversation
about that over on ubiqui...@googlegroups.com.

--Jono

[Christian Sonne]

You must be an Emacs user, right?  I am to, and I often find myself
trying to use ctrl-N and ctrl-P in other applications... I think we
could consider adding those as an equivalent to the up-arrow /down-
arrow keys; it would be a benefit for Emacs users and it wouldn't hurt
anybody else.

Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N already has uses in Firefox (Print/New window) - perhaps it would not be a great idea to compete against expected behaviour of all non-emacs users?

-- cers / Christian Sonne

>
> > Thanks for the explanation. Now I agree that tab completion and
> > choosing from suggestions are different actions. I never had to cycle
> > through suggestions before I stumbled upon this issue. The problem was
> > that I got stuck at the top choice and completion didn't help to get
> > out, plus, the list of suggestions was rather odd. However, I
> > personally would prefer Ctrl+N/Ctrl+P instead of arrow keys.

> > Timur Izhbulatov —www.timka.org

[Timur Izhbulatov]

2009/6/29 Jono DiCarlo <jdic...@mozilla.com>:

>
> I'm pretty sure that Google not being suggested is because of the case-
> sensitivity bug.  (See http://groups.google.com/group/ubiquity-firefox/browse_thread/thread/489b382eb420a265
> )
> We have a fix for this bug already, and it will be included in the
> final version of 0.5 to be released this week, so "g" or "go" will
> once again complete to "google".
>
> Timur, your suggestion about Ctrl-N and Ctrl-P is very interesting.
> You must be an Emacs user, right?

No, I'm a Vim user :) But I also use command line extensively and find
Ctrl-combinations very handy. Actually, incompatible navigation and
editing shortcuts in different kinds of applications (shells, input
fields in browsers and other GUI apps etc.) is a bit of problem for
me. I've been even thinking about making my own keymap where some
shortcuts can be used instead of arrow keys, Enter, Backspace etc.
Here's a very interesting blog post about this
http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/home-row-computing

> I am to, and I often find myself
> trying to use ctrl-N and ctrl-P in other applications... I think we
> could consider adding those as an equivalent to the up-arrow /down-
> arrow keys; it would be a benefit for Emacs users and it wouldn't hurt
> anybody else.

As Christian noticed, these combinations are already used for new
window and print. I wonder if it's safe to redefine them when Ubiquity
is active.

--
Timur Izhbulatov — www.timka.org

[Nickolay Ponomarev]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 1:56 PM, Timur Izhbulatov <timo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Recently I've updated to the latest 0.5 beta and noticed a very
significant change in the command completion. 

[...]

In my opinion, this greatly reduces Ubiquity's usability and I would
like to know if there is a way to change this behaviour.

Same here. I'm using 2692:af906ba5c9dc (with the google completion fixed, or at least almost fixed; this happens only with Parser 2 enabled).

1) typing "r" suggests "Search with Creative Commons", "Search with Answers.com" and three other equally nonsensical suggestions.
2) when you get to "res", top two suggestions are map and yelp for "res". I have no idea why "res" matched a location. These asynchronous completions also tend to get added to the top of the list after a delay, so you may end up accidentally mapping "res" instead of restarting firefox.
2a) There are also suggestions for "help restart-firefox" and "help refresh", which get replaced quickly with the actual commands (yay).
2b) If you close ubiquity and re-open it (so that "res" is prefilled), the help commands stay until you press the "End" key or interact with the input line in any other way.
3) Only typing "rest" gets you "restart firefox", with the issue of "help restart firefox" being the first suggestion for a little period of time.

The reason I'm posting this is that it seems that random noun completions get higher priority than verb that start with the given string (is it https://ubiquity.mozilla.com/trac/ticket/746 ?) and I'm wondering if it's planned to fix this before the release?
(The recent announcement made me concerned about it, because although the issue is marked as targeting 0.5, so are other 50 tickets and 50 tickets is not something you fix in a couple of days before the release...)

Nickolay

[satyr]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 4:46 AM, Timur Izhbulatov<timo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As Christian noticed, these combinations are already used for new
> window and print. I wonder if it's safe to redefine them when Ubiquity
> is active.

It's safe and certainly possible: http://gist.github.com/43341

Just like Vim/Emacs, Ubiquity is fully customizable. ;)

[Blair McBride]

That's not very webby.

I'd rant about this, but its likely to offend people.

- Blair
(who thinks Emacs & Vim are EVIL)

[psyberduck]

I'm noticing the same bug, only let me add some data. I'm on FF 3.5
on Vista. When I start typing "goo", it gives me "search with Google"
as one of the options...*until* I start to fill in what I want it to
search for. Once I enter the first letter of a term, no matter how
much of the word "google" I've typed already, then straight search
goes away, and add to calendar , check google calendar, and image
search become the most prevalent choices. This varies somewhat on
what letters I try to search for as to which of these three takes
prominence.

[Jono DiCarlo]

I released a new preview version, 0.5pre3, today. Please try
downloading it from http://ubiquity.mozilla.com/xpi/ubiquity-latest-beta.xpi
This version fixes the case-sensitivity issue, among other things, so
it should correct some of the weird suggestions you all have been
reporting.
Please give it a try; if you are still getting weird suggestions on
0.5pre3, then please do continue to report them in this group.
Thank you!
--Jono