Continuing the series of posts regarding our advanced completion lists for the upcoming SyntaxEditor for WPF product, today I’d like to introduce another innovative new feature: matched text highlights.
Remember that matches are made using a series of prioritized item matching algorithms, as discussed in a previous post.
The completion list auto-selects the closest matched item in the list as you type. However another sort of useful visualization is to be able to see how typed text matches against other items as well.
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SyntaxEditor showing a completion list with matched text on items highlighted
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This is where matched text highlights come in. In the screenshot above, I typed as in the editor after displaying the completion list. By default, the completion list auto-selected AStringValue in the list however I moved the selection down with the arrow key so you could see the highlights.
The AStringValue item has the AS characters highlighted because the top priority starts-with algorithm matched my typed text there.
The Equals item has its a and s characters highlighted because the shorthand algorithm matched my typed text there. Shorthand also matched the as in GetHashCode.
Just like with normal auto-selection, SyntaxEditor cycles through the prioritized list of item matching algorithms and uses the first one that matches an item to show highlights indicating where matches were made.
We really think end users will love this feature!