PR# 11316 Cannot target Editor or Context window to feature by typing its alias
Problem Report Summary
Submitter: prestoat2000
Category: EiffelStudio
Priority: Medium
Date: 2006/09/18
Class: Bug
Severity: Serious
Number: 11316
Release: 5.7.63630
Confidential: No
Status: Analyzed
Responsible:
Environment: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS i86pc; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20060627
Solaris 10 on x86
Synopsis: Cannot target Editor or Context window to feature by typing its alias
Description
The Feature name combo box for both the Editor and Context window won't accept the alias for a feature name (and presumably won't list the alias in wildcard popup match list when using wildcards, though I can't tell because the popup window is all grey due to another bug). To reproduce: Compile with attached class. Trying to type `prefix "@a"' into Editor feature name combo box doesn't work, nor does `@a'. Similarly for `infix "@b"'.
To Reproduce
Problem Report Interactions
If you show, the extended feature name in the list, it may make auto-completion work not very well. If the extended feature name is what is in the list, what happens if I type "try" and hit return. Will it target the Editor or Context window to `try' or will it fail to auto-complete? Also, the user may not know the identifier name of the feature, knowing it only by its alias. There should be some way to type in the alias in some form and see a list of matches. Would I have to type "*alias*" to see the features with aliases (which would of course NOT be ordered by alias but by the identifier)? Have you considered putting both the identifier and alias names in the list as separate entries, even though they are really different names for the same feature?
Although it might be confusing, the name of the feature containing an alias, e.g. try alias "@a", is actually `try'. The extended name is `try alias "@a"'. So it makes sense to only have access to `try' not `@a'. This is what the standard says. So the question is to whether or not we should show the feature name or the extended feature name in the list. Note that for the discussion the old `prefix' and `infix' notation should be discarded since it is obsoleted by ECMA.