Views: Filter nodes by author, autocomplete text field

I would like to add an exposed filter to my view that allows users to see all nodes by a single author. Unfortunately, the normal "author name" filter is nothing more than a select field, which really doesn't scale well. Actually, it's completely useless for any community site with more than perhaps 10 users.

Ideally, there should be an autocomplete text field, like the filter for a tag vocabulary. Considering that autocomplete fields for users are otherwise so frequently encountered (see the user reference field in CCK, the privatemsg module, the advanced search options on this site), it's a bit strange that this isn't offered as a views filter.

(I could get acquainted with the Views API, make a new module and implement the author autocomplete field there. But I would first like to know if it can be done without a whole day of coding and bugfixing.)