Forum Discussion

Novari-QA's avatar
Novari-QA
Frequent Contributor
7 years ago

Script Editor - How to turn off predicted typing?

Personally this predicted typing feature is extremely irritating. Perhaps there is a setting I turned on to make it so bad, but just as an example: Type in 1 double quote. Expected: a 2nd double ...
tristaanogre's avatar
tristaanogre
Esteemed Contributor
7 years ago

This is a new feature in TC 12.31 to emulate IDE's like visual studio or NetBeans.  I haven't run into the specific problem you have with typing in a quote and not getting the second one... that always works for me.  I know some folks are irritated with this feature but, personally, I kind of like it.

 

Unfortunately, there's no way to turn it off currently.  However, the request has been made and the folks from SmartBear have promised to take a look at improving this.

  • ryanlloyd's avatar
    ryanlloyd
    SmartBear Alumni (Retired)
    7 years ago

    I have been trying to follow-up on this after SmartBear Connect since the question came up during the Q&A.

     

    I would love to hear some concrete examples of when the scripting editor autocomplete features don't behave as you would expect. A quick video or a documented set of reproducible steps I can follow would be really helpful. I have found with IDE's, the auto completion of brackets/quotes is pretty typical and expected. If there are scenarios where it isn't working as expected in the TC Script editor, I'd like to track them down.

     

    What I really want to understand is whether there are just a few bugs we need to fix with it, or if a global option to turn off these IDE-like features is really desired. I don't want to introduce an explosion of configurable options to tweak all the behaviors of the scripting editor and make it too complex of a user experience if it can be avoided!

     

    Feedback welcome!

    • tristaanogre's avatar
      tristaanogre
      Esteemed Contributor
      7 years ago

      FYI, I'm currently in a development cycle adding some new code to my framework and the auto-complete of brackets and quotes is actually helpful for me.  I'll confess, it took some getting used to since I don't have a lot of experience with other IDE's so, when I'm typing away in my old patterns from prior to TC 12.31, I would get tripped up.  But now that I've had some time to work with it, it really is a time saver for me.  Of course, that's just my opinion... others may disagree.  YMMV

    • cunderw's avatar
      cunderw
      Community Hero
      7 years ago

      I had started a list a while back here: https://community.smartbear.com/t5/TestComplete-General-Discussions/Code-Editor-Issues-Improvement-Suggestions/m-p/147268

       

      But to recap:

       

      1. Auto-closing of quotes and brackets should not occur when there is already text present directly to the right of text.
        1. Ex. if you have a string say foo, and you position the cursor to the left of f, and enter a quote or or bracket, the closing quote or bracket will be applied so you end up with ""foo or [[foo
      2. Cntrl clicking on a function parameter inside of a function will navigate to the top of the unit. Extremely frustrating copying and pasting parameters. 
      3. Auto-Fill / Suggestions do not honor block or function scope.
        1. If start typing a variable or parameter name inside of a function the auto-suggestions display parameters and variables for functions outside of your current scope. 
      4. Read in block comments for function documentation including description, parameter types and default values. 
        1. Currently the only thing displayed is the parameter name and the type being object
      5. Allow global variables and classes to be supported by function selector and auto suggestions.
      6. Provide a built in format on save with something like JSLint

      Alternatively, providing plugins for something like Sublime text would also be very beneficial. 

      • Novari-QA's avatar
        Novari-QA
        Frequent Contributor
        7 years ago

        Not that I don't appreciate the effort Smartbear is doing to make this editor, to be honest I would love it if we can just utilize an already existing IDE.  Something like sublime or visual code.