Re: Emacs completion matches selection UI

[Stefan Monnier]

> The second problem is that there are no alternatives to the default
> match selection UI.  Your company-mode integration would help there.
> Please let me know when it's ready for testing.

There's nothing special there: just the company-capf in the latest
company package.

> Remember you can also see the completion candidates buffer without the
> minibuffer, if you e.g. do `complete-symbol' in a buffer.

I think you mean `completion-at-point'.  Indeed, that is a lot more
tricky, since in such a context, keys can have any number of
other bindings, and it's quite normal to hit `up' or `down' with the
intention of "move to the other line because I'm done writing this
completable element", so hijacking `up' or `down' in this context is
more delicate.

But I'm not completely sure whether the minibuffer completion UI has to be
identical to the in-buffer completion UI.  Of course, it's good for them
to be identical, all things being equal, but: things like company-mode don't
work well in the minibuffer, whereas the separate *Completions* buffer
actually works OK in that case (whereas it's much more problematic for
in-buffer completion where the *Completions* buffer may be fairly far
from point).

> The most important thing IMO is to avoid making a new buffer that
> requires `C-x o' and magical bindings.

My suggestion is to keep the separate buffer but let the user interact
with it without needing to switch to it via C-x o or some such action.

That seems doable without too much trouble in the current setup.  If we
want to avoid the separate buffer altogether, then we're in
auto-complete/company-mode territory, which won't happen for 24.4.


        Stefan