Where there is a finite set of meaningful text inputs (symbol names, names of existing files or editor commands, and so on) the IDE helps you to enter your text by offering completion. When you invoke completion, the system takes your partial input and either:
When your input remains partial, you may repeat the completion gesture.
When you see a choice of the possible meaningful inputs, certain gestures allow you to narrow the choice and quickly select the desired input, as described in Selecting the completed input.
When a command prompts for input in the echo area, the keys Tab, ? and Space can invoke completion, depending on the context.
In the Editor tool, a variety of completion commands are available. For example, in Emacs emulation Tab invokes the command Indent Selection or Complete Symbol. See the
LispWorks Editor User Guide
for details of this and other editor commands.
In the Shell tool, Tab expands filenames.
In the Listener tool using Emacs emulation, Escape Tab expands filenames.
In many text input panes such as the
Class:
field of a Class Browser tool, Up and Down invoke in-place completion while pressing the button raises a completion dialog.
Also, clicking the 
button to the right of a text input pane raises a modal completion dialog, as described in Completion dialog.
The IDE presents the choice of inputs in one of two ways, described in the next two sections. The option Tools > Preferences... > Environment > General > Use in-place completion controls whether in-place completion is used.
In-place completion presents the choice of complete inputs in a special non-modal window. Example in-place completion window below shows this in the context of the editor command Complete Symbol.
Figure 3.11 Example in-place completion window
While this window is visible, most keyboard gestures such as unmodified alphanumeric and punctuation keys are processed as ordinary input, adding to your partial input. This reduces the number of possible completions. Conversely, deleting part of your input will increase the number of possible completions.
You can navigate the choice with Up and Down and you can select the desired completion at any time with Return or double-click. To cancel the attempt to complete, press Escape.
You can reduce the number of displayed completions by adding a filter to the in-place completion window.
To add the filter, press Ctrl+Return. To use the filter, type a substring of the desired result. By default, filtering is by a case-insensitive substring comparison.
Figure 3.12 Example in-place completion window with filter
You can set filter modes to alter the way that the filter operates, just as described in Advanced Filtering. Briefly, you select options from the
Filter
dropdown menu or with the keyboard gestures Ctrl+Shift+R, Ctrl+Shift+E and Ctrl+Shift+C. The choice of items displayed changes according to the content of the filter pane and the selected filter options, and the label on the
Filter
dropdown changes to indicate your selected filter options.
When the Use in-place completion option (see Selecting the completed input) is off, all keyboard completion gestures raise a modal dialog presenting a choice of completion options.
Also, clicking the 
button to the right of a text input pane raises a modal completion dialog.
You can navigate the choice with Up and Down and you can select the desired completion at any time with the Return key, double-click, or click the
OK
button. To cancel the attempt to complete, press Escape.
A modal completion dialog automatically has a filter if the number of possible completions exceeds the value of the option Tools > Preferences... > Environment > General > Add a filter to dialog lists longer than: . By default this option has value 25.
The filter options described above are also available in a modal completion dialog, and are controlled by the same keyboard gestures, for example Ctrl+Shift+R. See Advanced Filtering for details.
LispWorks IDE User Guide (Windows version) - 13 Sep 2017