RE: Feature request : Tab-completion for 'shell-comand'

[Drew Adams]

> > I think that when the minibuffer is active, we should still output
> > a message, only differently (as does minibuffer-message).  
> > Maybe just using minibuffer-message (and changing it so it uses
> > plain "message" when the minibuffer is not active) would do the trick.
> 
> I wish _all_ messages would display ala minibuffer-message when the
> user's editing in the minibuffer -- the current behavior (temporarily
> ovewriting the minibuffer to show messages) is stupid and annoying,
> especially given that many errors one gets are fairly trivial or
> transient.
> 
> I made a patch to do this sometime before Emacs 21 was released, and
> recall various issues popping up though... I think mainly it was the
> somewhat more exotic users of message, like quail completion info etc.

I find that it depends, though I can't give you a good fer-instance right
now. I'm not sure that a blanket change would be appropriate.

One disadvantage to `minibuffer-message' in some contexts is its
`minibuffer-message-timeout' delay. That can be inappropriate or annoying in
some contexts. And the message appears for only a limited time, even if
there is no input event. That's usually TRT, but not always, in my
experience.

Possibly a single DTRT messaging interface can be devised, but I suspect
that some code will continue to need to explicitly DTRT on a case-by-case
basis.