Typically the feedback would be generated remotely, rather than by the tab itself, because the application generating the feedback is running elsewhere on the network. The contention that would result between pen events and continuous display updates would make poor use of the communication bandwidth. Elision is based on k-ary search techniques. The user selects the target item if it is displayed. Otherwise, selecting any ellipsis redraws the screen to show an expansion of the selected region of the list into 13 smaller portions as before.
Elision is reasonably efficient.
To select one item among one million, for example, requires no more than six selections. The mean word length in the American Heritage online dictionary, containing 84433 words, is 8.9 characters. A user typing a word from this dictionary on a graphic keyboard must thus make 8.9 selections, on average. Elision, by comparison, can bring up any word in this dictionary with just four selections. Here the user types the first few letters of the item.