predictive.el -- predictive completion of words as you type in Emacs

[Toby 'qubit' Cubitt]

The languages we use to communicate contain a large amount of
redundancy. Given the first few letters of a word, for instance, it's
not too difficult to predict what should come next. Try it! You can
probably easily guess how to fill in the missing letters in the
following sentence:

     Giv th fir fe lett o a wor i no diffi t predi wh shou com nex.

This is even more true of languages used to communicate with
computers, which typically have very restricted vocabularies and
rigidly defined grammars.

Predictive completion exploits this redundancy by attempting to
complete what you are trying to type before you've finished typing
it. It predicts what you're trying to type from context, and from the
frequency with which you've used words in the past. (Something like
the IntelliSense feature in some IDEs, but on steroids.)

The predictive mode package adds a predictive completion minor mode to
Emacs. The sources are too big to post here, but are available from:

http://www.dr-qubit.org/download.php?file=predictive/predictive.tar.gz

The package's web page can be found at:

http://www.dr-qubit.org/emacs.php



Features:
---------

Predictive mode is highly configurable and includes many features. The
full texinfo sources for the user guide are included in the package,
and the user guide is available online at:

http://www.dr-qubit.org/predictive/user-guide/html/index.php

and for download in a variety of formats from:

http://www.dr-qubit.org/emacs.php#docs


Here is an overview of the main features (though their behaviour can
be significantly modified to suit your own tastes):

* Fast completion of words: even for large dictionaries (e.g. the
  included 40,000 word English dictionary), predictive mode should
  find completions for words faster then you can type.

* Dynamic completion: the most likely completion can be provisionally
  inserted into the buffer, and accepted by typing an end-of-word
  character, e.g. punctuation.

* A list of completions can be displayed in the echo area or a
  tooltip, and selected by typing a single hotkey.

* Completions can also be selected from a drop-down menu, or from a
  completion browser which hierarchically organises all possible
  completions.

* Predictive mode can learn word frequencies as you type, or from
  existing samples of your writing, so that it adapts to your style of
  writing and the predictions become more accurate. You can even train
  different dictionaries for different types of writing (e.g. one for
  email, one for scientific papers, etc.).

* Predictive mode can automatically switch between different
  dictionaries, based on regexps delimiting regions of text. The
  regions are updated automatically as you type. This allows, for
  example, switching to a dictionary of LaTeX commands when you type
  "\", or using a dictionary of LaTeX maths commands when typing
  within an equation environment.

* Predictive mode has features to make it easier to use it with
  different major modes. The package already includes setup functions
  for LaTeX, HTML and Fortran 90.


Toby Cubitt
-- 
PhD Student
Quantum Information Theory group
Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics
Garching, Germany

email: address@hidden
web: www.dr-qubit.org

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
PhD Student
Quantum Information Theory group
Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics
Garching, Germany

email: address@hidden
web: www.dr-qubit.org