The LaTeX editing box does some sort of autocompletion. Unfortunately it’s incredibly annoying because it (1) usually doesn’t autocomplete to what I am actually trying to enter, (2) it is hard to predict, and (3) it seems inconsistent as to whether if I keep typing the thing it’s autocompleted to it will (a) just move my cursor forward through the completion or (b) add extra stuff after it. So, e.g., if I type $\delta then I end up with what I wanted (except that for some reason the autocompleter sometimes wants to give me \Delta rather than \delta) but if I type $\epsilon then I get \epsilonsilon.
In at least some cases where the completion is ambiguous (e.g., \delta versus \Delta—of course it’s ambiguous only because the autocompleter is choosing to ignore case) it looks as if the autocompleter is giving me whichever completion I have used most recently, so if I change \Delta to \delta then the next time I enter a formula I’ll get \delta instead. This seems like a well-intentioned feature, and maaaaybe it will turn out to work well, but it seems to me like the main effect is to make the system less predictable and therefore slower and more unpleasant to use. (I don’t want to have to ask myself every time I type a character “has this thing just changed what I typed to something else, and if so is it what I want or not?”. I want to let my fingers enter LaTeX on autopilot and have the right thing happen. Or, if what they have to do is to enter some weird abbreviated version of LaTeX defined by the autocompleter, I can learn to do that. But if the system is learning and adapting its behaviour, it stops me learning and adapting mine, and as long as its behaviour is often wrong (which I think is inevitable) this is not a net win.
Yeah, I noticed this myself, and I am also not a huge fan of it. I am using an open-source LaTeX editor, and while the autocomplete is clearly well-intentioned, it’s too agressive in a bunch of situations.
I might try to turn it off completely, or maybe find some way to make it less aggressive.
The LaTeX editing box does some sort of autocompletion. Unfortunately it’s incredibly annoying because it (1) usually doesn’t autocomplete to what I am actually trying to enter, (2) it is hard to predict, and (3) it seems inconsistent as to whether if I keep typing the thing it’s autocompleted to it will (a) just move my cursor forward through the completion or (b) add extra stuff after it. So, e.g., if I type $\delta then I end up with what I wanted (except that for some reason the autocompleter sometimes wants to give me \Delta rather than \delta) but if I type $\epsilon then I get \epsilonsilon.
In at least some cases where the completion is ambiguous (e.g., \delta versus \Delta—of course it’s ambiguous only because the autocompleter is choosing to ignore case) it looks as if the autocompleter is giving me whichever completion I have used most recently, so if I change \Delta to \delta then the next time I enter a formula I’ll get \delta instead. This seems like a well-intentioned feature, and maaaaybe it will turn out to work well, but it seems to me like the main effect is to make the system less predictable and therefore slower and more unpleasant to use. (I don’t want to have to ask myself every time I type a character “has this thing just changed what I typed to something else, and if so is it what I want or not?”. I want to let my fingers enter LaTeX on autopilot and have the right thing happen. Or, if what they have to do is to enter some weird abbreviated version of LaTeX defined by the autocompleter, I can learn to do that. But if the system is learning and adapting its behaviour, it stops me learning and adapting mine, and as long as its behaviour is often wrong (which I think is inevitable) this is not a net win.
Yeah, I noticed this myself, and I am also not a huge fan of it. I am using an open-source LaTeX editor, and while the autocomplete is clearly well-intentioned, it’s too agressive in a bunch of situations.
I might try to turn it off completely, or maybe find some way to make it less aggressive.