Version: (using KDE 4.0.83) Installed from: Ubuntu Packages The F2 dialog autocompletes text in a way that is confusing to users looking at the screen. When opening the F2 dialog and pressing "k" (I want to open Kate) the dialog fills in for me "kon" because I had previously opened konsole. Despite the text "kon" the user can still type "a" to get "kate". This is very confusing.
Created attachment 25942 [details] Screenshot of F2 dialog after pressing only the "k" key. In making this screenshot, I have noticed that the "on" text is in a slightly lighter shade of grey than the "k" text. This is not noticeable to end users. Please either use a (much) lighter shade of grey or disable the autocomplete feature. Thanks.
if you prefer a different completion method, right click on the text edit and select a different one. this is just the default. perhaps you'd prefer Manual instead. of all the completion modes supported (this actually comes from libkdeui, btw) this one was the best compromise between autocompletion and having the icons below. > that is confusing to users did you test this amongst a representative set of users?
> > that is confusing to users > did you test this amongst a representative set of users? Yes, I wouldn't say something silly like that without asking at least one other person. In this case, I have about 20 people (and growing) who I've installed Kubuntu (7.04 - 8.04, all with KDE 3.x) for. In this case, I asked the wife and a friend who happened to stop by. Neither of them noticed that the second and third letters were of a different shade than the first letter. Would you like me to ask other people? I have quite a few who are used to me asking silly bug-related questions about! At the very least, please consider making the completed letters a lighter shade of grey. Thanks.
Looks to be an issue with whatever theme you're using, because the default theme's autocomplete text is lighter than the one in that screenshot.
The plasma theme being used in that screenshot is Aya which uses the color scheme currently selected in System Settings (i.e. Aya does not provide it's own colors file.) It is not entirely clear from that screenshot if Dotan is using the default Oxygen color scheme. If this is really a problem across a variety of users then it is not specific to plasma, or the plasma theme. Rather it would be either a color scheme issue or a libkdeui issue.
Created attachment 25996 [details] Default colours krunner over Honeycomb krunner You are correct, I did not realize that I had changed those colours. I was using the Honeycomb colour set. I have included a screenshot which has Krunner of both coloursets (default over Honeycomb). In the default colours there is much improvement over the Honeycomb version, however, I still think that it should be lighter. On my CRT desktop display with the default colours I can see the difference clearly, but on my LCD laptop (Dell Inspiron 15.4") and on an LCD display at the university (Phillips 17") I cannot tell the difference without looking closely. Maybe this is not an issue for CRT users, but on LCD displays the autocompleted letters should be of a lighter colour. I'm not nitpicking here, this is genuinely confusing because it really looks like letters are there that the user did not type. Furthermore, the caret is displayed AFTER the autocompleted letters (see screenshot). That means that the user's input is not going where the caret is. Even if you disagree about the importance of lightening the autocompleted letters, I do not see how one could disagree about the caret location.
I'm updating the summary to specify the caret position issue, and reopening the bug.
as pointed out, this has nothing to do with krunner.
@Aaron: Thanks, I did not realize that Krunner is not responsible for the caret's location. I see that the bug has been moved to KDEUI so I hope it gets resolved there. Have a great day.
*** Bug 176436 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The color used for the auto-completed text is the same as the "disabled" text color. You can change colors using the systemsettings colors module. Regarding the erratic caret position, this is fixed with commit r1002807 by Pascal Létourneau. WebSVN link: http://websvn.kde.org/?view=rev&revision=1002807
Thanks, Christoph, I can confirm that the caret position is as it should be in KDE SC 4.4