Dynamic autocomplete for words (non-LaTeX commands) in WinEdt 6.0

Question

Does anyone know how to get WinEdt 6.0 to perform dynamic autocomplete ?.

I would like to expand words I've already used, either in the current .tex file, or in the directory tree for a given document, without typing the entire word.

Any ideas ? Note, I'm not trying to expand latex commands, such as \begin{... }..\end{} but to expand words I have used.

Welcome to TeX.SX! You can have a look at our starter guide to familiarize yourself further with our format. — texenthusiast, Jul 01 '13 at 22:17
Hi Mr./Mrs Downvoter: care to leave a comment for a newbie atleast! — texenthusiast, Jul 01 '13 at 22:18
Related: Which editors can autocomplete any word from document? (WinEdt doesn’t come up) and WinEdt autocompletion (not helpful) — Qrrbrbirlbel, Jul 01 '13 at 22:31

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Besides the choices listed by Robert in his answer, which probably won't work in the latest versions of WinEdt (version 6 is quite obsolete now and has not full support for Unicode), WinEdt has a built-in completion feature.

Execute the command 'Complete Word' (Ctrl+Enter) in the Tools menu and WinEdt will display a dialog with a list of possible completions. For example, if you press that shortcut after having typed "yest" you will get:

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If there is only one possible completion, this is automatically inserted without displaying a dialog. If, on the other hand, there are no possible completions for this word (indicating that it is misspelled), WinEdt displays the Spelling Suggestions dialog:

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The same happens if there are more than 255 possible completions (indicating that the action has been initiated on a string that is too short to merit accurate completion).

The list of possible completions is compiled from the WinEdt dictionaries that are enabled for that document's mode (and submodes). Specialized dictionaries are made of LaTeX commands, WinEdt macros, and other keywords enabled for a particular mode.

Dictionaries for languages different than English are available in the Dictionaries section of the WinEdt's community site. The macro InstallDict simplifies the installation of new dictionaries and is useful for WinEdt newbies.

Note, finally, that you can also add your own words to a custom dictionary and then use them for completion.

This can be done by pressing 'Add' in the above dialog (the latter).

It's not a proper "dynamic completion", but it does what you were looking for.

If you are also interested in "environments completion", see this answer of mine.

Very nice explanation. That is why I waited instead of asking the OP to use cntrl + enter by myself +1, :) — , Jul 02 '13 at 10:24

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 02 '13 at 01:12

For things like this you should always check WinEdt's community site. There you'll find two macros for auto-completion (however, they both will only search in the current file, not in the current directory):

complete will incrementally search backwards for words starting with the same letters as the current word; you can invoke the macro multiple times until you get the word you are looking for;
completeWord will instead present you a list of possible completions to choose from.

Dynamic autocomplete for words (non-LaTeX commands) in WinEdt 6.0

2 Answers2