Word completion
Encyclopedia
Word completion is a common feature in web browsers and similar text entry contexts. When a user begins the entry of a frequently-used word, the computer automatically completes it, or proposes a list of choices.
be available, with potential privacy
implications, as this list may reveal the browsing history of other users of the computer.
use in predictive text
systems.
Word completion works well only if there are a small number of possible items to search through. As discussed above, such is the case when entering urls in a browser.
But for unrestricted text entry, word completion can be an
impediment. A word-completion system requires that the user, after each keystroke, calculates whether it is better to keep on typing to decrease the
size of the word-completion list, or examine the best choices presented to try to find their word.
This mental effort is often ignored since it is much easier
to think simply about counting keystrokes. However the effect of mental computation is real, and
causes throughput to decrease rather than increase.
Some early work in this area was done by Dunlop and
Crossan.
The efficiency of word completion is based on the average length of the words typed. If, for example, the text consists of programming languages which often have LongNamesForSpecialFunctions, completion is both useful and generally applied in editors specially geared towards programmer such as Vim
.
Consider for example entry of the word "soccer" with a word
completion system, coupled to a reasonably large dictionary of English.
This gives the following result:
A user might reasonably guess that stopping at "soc" and then looking though
a list of possible completions would find the word "soccer" more quickly
than typing the rest of the letters, "cer". Unfortunately, this guess ignores many
common words such as "sock" "socket" "society" "social", as well as
uncommon words such as socorro or socrates.
In different languages, word lengths can differ dramatically. Picking up on the above example, a soccer player in German
is translated as a "Fussballspieler", with a length of 15 character. This example illustrates that English
is not an ideal language for WC; this study http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb16-3/tb48soj2.pdf shows an average length for English words in a corpus
of over 100,000 words to be 8.9, for Hungarian
to be 10.5 and for German to be 13.2. In addition, in some languages like German called fusional language
s as well as agglutinative language
s, words can be combined, creating even longer words.
Successful example of word completion in browsers
For an example of a relatively successful application of word completion, consider entering "www.microsoft.com" in the address box of a browser. A user may find that typing "www.mi" is sufficient. The completions database in use in this case is the user's browser history. "www.microsoft.com" would be a commonly offered completion. However, other completions maybe available, with potential privacy
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
implications, as this list may reveal the browsing history of other users of the computer.
Examples of word completion in general text editing
Word completion can be ineffective foruse in predictive text
Predictive text
Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a prediction rather than repeatedly sequencing through the same group of "letters" it represents, in the same,...
systems.
Word completion works well only if there are a small number of possible items to search through. As discussed above, such is the case when entering urls in a browser.
But for unrestricted text entry, word completion can be an
impediment. A word-completion system requires that the user, after each keystroke, calculates whether it is better to keep on typing to decrease the
size of the word-completion list, or examine the best choices presented to try to find their word.
This mental effort is often ignored since it is much easier
to think simply about counting keystrokes. However the effect of mental computation is real, and
causes throughput to decrease rather than increase.
Some early work in this area was done by Dunlop and
Crossan.
The efficiency of word completion is based on the average length of the words typed. If, for example, the text consists of programming languages which often have LongNamesForSpecialFunctions, completion is both useful and generally applied in editors specially geared towards programmer such as Vim
Vim (text editor)
Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface...
.
Consider for example entry of the word "soccer" with a word
completion system, coupled to a reasonably large dictionary of English.
This gives the following result:
| Type | ||
| s | 14,234 words begin with s, | |
| |so | 848 words begin with so, | |
| |soc | 75 words begin with soc, | |
| |socc | 2 words begin with socc |
A user might reasonably guess that stopping at "soc" and then looking though
a list of possible completions would find the word "soccer" more quickly
than typing the rest of the letters, "cer". Unfortunately, this guess ignores many
common words such as "sock" "socket" "society" "social", as well as
uncommon words such as socorro or socrates.
In different languages, word lengths can differ dramatically. Picking up on the above example, a soccer player in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
is translated as a "Fussballspieler", with a length of 15 character. This example illustrates that English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
is not an ideal language for WC; this study http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb16-3/tb48soj2.pdf shows an average length for English words in a corpus
Text corpus
In linguistics, a corpus or text corpus is a large and structured set of texts...
of over 100,000 words to be 8.9, for Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
to be 10.5 and for German to be 13.2. In addition, in some languages like German called fusional language
Fusional language
A fusional language is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes in a way that can be difficult to segment....
s as well as agglutinative language
Agglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
s, words can be combined, creating even longer words.
Examples of word completion
- OpenOffice.org WriterOpenOffice.org WriterOpenOffice.org Writer is the word processor component of the OpenOffice.org software package. Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word and Corel's WordPerfect, with some of their features....
has a working word completion program that proposes words previously typed in the text, rather than from the whole dictionary - Microsoft ExcelMicrosoft ExcelMicrosoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
spreadsheet application has a working word completion program that proposes words previously typed in upper cells
Specialised Software
- Phrase Express - freeware
- Type Booster - word prediction, shortcut expansion, clipboard enhancer, etc.
- Sumitsoft - typing assistant