Re: completion.el users?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 11.05.2013 22:19, Drew Adams wrote:
> > > > I think auto-complete-mode is superior to completion.el.
> > >
> > > Does it do what completion.el does (and more)?
> >
> > It has a similar feature:
> > http://auto-complete.org/doc/manual.html#candidate-suggestion
>
> 1. Is auto-complete-mode part of Emacs?  I don't think so.  Let's not divert the
> thread, if not.  The question is whether Emacs already contains a reasonable
> replacement for completion.el.

You asked, I answered. Who's diverting what now?

> 2. Looking at the auto-complete-mode doc and demo, it's not clear to me that it
> is comparable to completion.el.  It certainly does many things that
> completion.el does not do.  (It is also quite large - multiple directories and
> files.)  But I don't see that a-c-m actually does what completion.el does.  Can
> you confirm that it does?

Like I said, the feature is similar, not identical.

> I understand that you can create a dictionary for a-c-m of terms you use.  And I
> understand that a-c-m does lots of useful things wrt completing programming
> entities that it knows about.  And it records the counts and use times of
> _completions_ that you use.

Yes.

> But what about the completion.el use case?  Does a-c-m record ordinary words (as
> well as programming constructs) that you type and thus consider them future
> completion candidates?  IOW, does simply typing text, or moving the cursor over
> text, suffice to turn the words typed or traversed into completion candidates?

It allows to use "word in buffer" and "words in buffers in the same 
mode" as sources of completions, so yes, to an extent. Similarly to 
`dabbrev-expand'.

> E.g., if you were writing an essay or some documentation, does hitting a key
> complete a word that you start typing, based on words you have used previously
> (including during past sessions)?  From the doc I couldn't tell.

Past sessions? No.