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I strongly dislike the idea of automatically jumping into a folder when there’s only one match: it feels like a feature optimised for very slow typers that acti
by chrismorgan 4y ago
I strongly dislike the idea of automatically jumping into a folder when there’s only one match: it feels like a feature optimised for very slow typers that actively penalises fast typers, because it makes things generally unpredictable: will one character be enough to navigate, or two, or three? It depends on the siblings, and if you type more characters than are required, you will be penalised by ending up somewhere else as the remaining letters are fed to the next level down that you haven’t even seen yet. My general habit in navigating is to type three characters and press Tab, because that’s almost always sufficient, and is plenty fast. I have a very few places where I’ve learned to do other things. Under my habit, I could end up as much as two levels down from where I wanted to be.
- mgunyho 4y agoI'm a fast typer, and I understand where you're coming from! But note how there's a small (200ms by default but can be configured) delay when the auto-cd happens. This is actually pretty important, because otherwise it's impossible to see where you cd'd to. Importantly, during this delay, the keystrokes are eaten (so they are not fed down to the next level), and from my experience this is enough to basically never accidentally cd in the lower level. The auto-cd can also be turned off with a CLI option.
- chrismorgan 4y agoOK, delay sounds good.
- jonnycomputer 4y agoI think you were highlighting an important potential usability issue; the delay might be ok, but I still prefer a keystroke, such as enter, to confirm selection.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago> The auto-cd can also be turned off with a CLI option. Which was seemingly addressed as well, no?
- jonnycomputer 4y agoFair.
- avgcorrection 4y ago> that actively penalises fast typers, I think the word you are looking for is “indirectly”.
- Aeolun 4y agoThat feels kinda direct though?
- chrismorgan 4y agoEh, I get what avgcorrection was going for—unintentionally, incidentally. Depending on the angle you look at it, it could count as both direct and indirect. I’ll stand by “actively”.
- fouric 4y agoI have the "automatically jump to a folder" setting turned on in my editor's file browser (Emacs with Helm), and it works much better than you're predicting - I rarely end up more folders down than I am shooting for, I don't need to invest much mental energy into prediction, and if I make a mistake, navigating up again is a single chord. I think you're underestimating how efficient your brain can get at guesstimating how many characters are required to navigate to a directory, especially when the directory structure is familiar (at which point I virtually never overshoot). And, I still find value in this feature despite being a fast typist (90 WPM).