Several Improvements and Changes to JQueryUI Autocomplete

Several Improvements and Changes to JQueryUI Autocomplete

Several weeks ago I made several changes to the jqueryui autocomplete control that we need for using it in a collaboration platform (it's call "Tricia", see http://www.infoasset.de/). I expected I would want to change so many things that I have to maintain a separate fork independent of the official release anyway. However, now I saw that the new release contains one bugfix I already made (and several more I'd like to have in my version) and I'm wondering if my changes are general enough to be worth being contributed to the official version.

This is what I changed:
  •  added a new "submit" event that also fires when users hits enter but has not selected an item from the menu. The control closes after this event. This is needed because the user should be able to enter arbitrary search terms and not be forced to choose from the suggestions
  • preventDefault() on keydown ENTER and NUMPAD_ENTER to prevent form submit (not sure if this is fixed in new release, might only apply to certain browsers)
  • keypress default behaviour is always a new search regardless of last term.This solves a minor bug related to the minlength: if you backspace under minLength and type the same again you are missing the first autocomplete because self.term still has that value (I think this is what also changed in the new official release)
  • fixed mouseenter/mouseover bug that selects elements when menu opens under the mouse. This is a pretty annoying behavior when you click the input control and position the mouse under the control
  • fixed positioning issue when aligning at right borders (changing width of menu is the problem)
  • added maxWidth and fixedWidth options
  • there may be items (suggestions) without value (label is not assigned as default). For those items only select events are fired, they cannot be submitted (see new "submit" event above)
  • when item.html is set, it is used for rendering
I'm not sure whether this is understandable. I'm planning to add more features like partitioning the suggestions in several sections (with small headings). Not sure wheter this will be possible anyway soon because there is progress on the menu-widget that is currently only used for autocomplete?
Feedback highly appreciated