krunner frustrations: delete doesn't, autocomplete, full history not just 20

Duncan 1i5t5.duncan at cox.net
Sat Mar 23 21:06:52 GMT 2024


So this functionality, which I'd consider intuitive/natural, appears to me 
to be missing in plasma, or at least in krunner.  But it seems so normal 
to me I can hardly believe it's actually missing, which means, despite 
over two decades of experience with kde/plasma and linux in general and my 
relative comfort/familiarity with configuration browsing/changes in 
general, I seem to have missed these.

I'm on qt/kde/plasma6 now, but these were broken in 5 as well, and IIRC in 
4, but at least the one and IIRC both worked as expected in qt/kde3.

So is this krunner functionality actually missing or did *I* miss some 
configuration somewhere?  Seemed wise to ask here to see if anyone else 
either knows how to fix or has experienced the same frustration, before I 
go looking to find and if necessary report these as bugs.

1) Krunner delete key functionality: I believe in kde/plasma in general 
but at least in krunner, while backspace works to delete to the /left/ of 
the text-insertion caret, delete does not work to delete to the /right/ of 
it, and indeed, seems to do nothing.  With text selected I'd expect /both/ 
backspace/delete to delete it, but only backspace does, delete... again 
appears to do nothing.

Delete works as expected in bash (in both konsole and at a text login), 
and I'm /somewhat/ familiar with configuring it there (as in, while I've 
never actually had to do it because all the distros I've run have it set 
what I'd consider "sensibly", I've seen the procedure to configure it in 
the bash/readline manpage/infopages and thus know where I'd look to get 
instructions as to how to configure it, should I ever need to).  And it 
seems to work as expected in gtk-based apps (firefox, pan, claws-mail) tho 
I imagine I'd have a tougher time (than with readline/bash) figuring out 
how to change them if I needed to.  

But it definitely does NOT work in krunner, generally the only kde-related 
location I use enough to be familiar with.  But IIRC it DID work correctly 
in the kde3 era.  I'm on qt/kde6 now but it didn't work with 5 either, and 
IIRC it didn't work with 4, which is where the functionality seems to have 
disappeared, much to my frustration altho apparently not "much enough" to 
have prompted my actually asking about it until now... because I always 
figured it had to be something wrong with my config that I'd eventually 
find... only I never did!

So: For krunner, how do I fix the delete key to delete to the right of the 
carat (or with text selected, deletes that) just as backspace deletes to 
the left (or with text selected, deletes it)?

2) Krunner autocomplete:  Same story here basically only I really don't 
recall whether it worked in the kde3 era or not (I was new enough to kde/
linux at that time that I was still learning heavily and autocomplete 
wasn't something I really knew to expect, yet), but IIRC it was broken in 
the kde4 era thru the now-current qt/kde/plasma6.

In krunner's settings I've tried with history set to both "enable 
suggestions" (which I either had set sometime in kde4/5 or is the kde/
plasma6 default) and "enabled autocomplete" (just recently tried).

In shortcuts, common actions, edit, next and previous completion matches 
are set to their default ctrl+down and ctrl+up, text-completion is its 
default ctrl+e, and substring completion is set to ctrl+shift+t (it's 
ctrl+t by default but I use that for toolbar toggling, which doesn't have 
a default hotkey). 

But while the initial autocomplete does work, I can't seem to figure out 
how to get it to go to the next completion possibility.  The only way I 
can get it to show more than one is by deleting all text and pressing the 
down arrow, after which it shows the most recent 20 matches.  If I type a 
few characters it'll auto-complete to the most recent usage candidate for 
those characters, but I can't see how to get it to go to the /next/ most 
recent.

For instance, I use youtube a lot and have multiple scripts named like 
yt.abc, yt.def, etc.  If I type "yt." and yt.def was last used, it'll 
autocomplete that, but yt.abc is in the history as I can see if I delete 
everything from the input box and hit down-arrow if necessary, but I can't 
figure out how to actually /get/ to it without typing the additional 
letter "a", so "yt.a" after which it'll autocomplete the "bc" to "yt.abc".

Based on the ctrl+down and ctrl+up hotkeys set for next- and previous-
completion matches, and having autocomplete enabled for krunner, one would 
expect that typing "yt." would produce "yt.def" as the autocomplete 
(again, assuming that was the most recently used), and it does indeed, but 
one would *ALSO* expect that hitting ctrl+down would then deliver "yt.abc" 
as the second most recently used "yt." action, and that does not happen.  
NOTHING seems to happen.  I can hit ctrl+down, ctrl+up, ctrl-e, and ctrl-
shift-t, in whatever order all I want, and NOTHING seems to move it from 
that first autocompleted "yt.def"!

The only way I can get that "yt.abc" autocomplete is to either type that 
additional "a" so "yt.a", or to clear the text-box so I get the full most-
recently-used-20 list, and choose it from there.

So, for krunner, how do I get the autocomplete to switch to the SECOND 
(and third and...) autocompletion candidates.  AFAIK I have my config set 
to allow me to do it with the default ctrl+down, but it ... simply ... 
doesn't ... work!  While one might try to blame it on a bug in the after 
all still new kde/plasma6, that doesn't explain it not working previously 
in the mature kde/plasma5 either.

3) Finally, how do I get krunner to give me the full history initially and 
not just the most-recent-20?  If I delete an entry (hover over the right 
side of an entry to get the delete button and click it), the list expands 
to the bottom of the screen with additional entries -- I believe it 
actually keeps 50 in history.  But I don't see a way to get it to give me 
the full list without deleting an entry.  (If I don't actually want to 
delete anything I can create a fake new entry by typing something, running 
it, then activating krunner again to delete it, getting the expanded list 
that way, but I want it to give me the expanded list by default.)

So, in krunner, how do I get it to give me the full history list, not just 
the most-recent-20, by default?

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman



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