Re: [Gnushogi-devel] gnushogi xboard support

[Yann Dirson]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 11:52:33AM +0200, address@hidden wrote:
> > Indeed, that's the problem the shell completion would address -
> > assuming we're just talking about shell users here, since people launching
> > xboard from a GUI would rather use .desktop or other menu entries.
> >
> I can't imagine well how that would work. Most users would not want
> @shogi, @chu or @xq on the command line, as they would want to use XBoard
> for normal Chess. And it seems hard for the shell to predict what the user
> would want in terms of command-line arguments. Does it keep statistics on
> what the user types?

Shell completion (programable or otherwise) only happens when the user
explicitely requests it, usually by hitting TAB, and the shell answers
by completing the word being typed (in the case of bash) as much chars
do until there is are several possiblities.  Depending on the context
(eg. previous options), different sets of words may be available -
that can be pretty complex.

In the case of xboard, the set of words for completion would include
all the options, and @ would have to be special, triggering expansion
of .xop filenames in the defined search path.  Ideally they should
even be displayed as first choices so they get noticed.  That way,
@shogi and such will be visible to users, but that wouldn't get too
much in their way.