1   Introduction

BBAutoComplete adds word auto-completion to Affrus, BBEdit, Mailsmith, Microsoft Word, Script Debugger, Smile, Tex-Edit Plus, and TextWrangler. You type the start of a word, press a key, and BBAutoComplete types the letters to complete the word. If BBAutoComplete guessed wrong, you can keep pressing the key to cycle through other possible completions. Other auto-completion utilities need to be taught the abbreviations and expansions that you use; BBAutoComplete avoids this hassle by automatically looking for expansions in the program’s open documents. This means that it always suggests completions that are relevant to your current task.

BBAutoComplete is probably most useful for programmers, who need to remember and type long variable and method names, but it can also help with prose writing. It’s useful any time you need to type long words quickly and accurately.

BBEdit 9 and later have a built-in auto-completion feature, however BBAutoComplete is preferable in some ways:

• BBAutoComplete can look for completions using text in other windows and documents that are open, not just the current document.
• BBAutoComplete works with all document types in BBEdit. The document can have any language selected, including “(none).”
• Depending on the language and where your cursor is, BBEdit may ignore potential completions, even if the words appear just a few lines away in the same document.
• The completions that BBAutoComplete offers are easily predictable and consistent; they do not change based on the syntactic context.
• BBAutoComplete is case-sensitive, which helps to narrow the list to the most relevant completions.