Re: icomplete-mode vs. iswitchb

[Stephen Eglen]

On Fri, Dec 06 2013, Josh wrote:

> As was I, and I pressed the point[0] until it became clear to me that
> Stefan had already made up his mind.

THanks for that link Josh, I had missed that thread.

> SM> No, ido is a superset of iswitchb, but AFAICT there's no way to
> SM> customize ido such that it works like iswitchb.
>
> This seems like a decision that merits more investigation than
> "AFAICT".

I agree.  I am copying Kim on this thread, as Kim might be better
placed to answer that.  My reading of the docstring for ido-mode would
suggest that setting it to 'buffer would mean it works like iswitchb.

> SM> The plan for "ido by default" is rather to slowly make ido obsolete by
> SM> adding the corresponding functionality either in the default completion
> SM> UI or in icomplete-mode.
> SM> An alternative is to try and re-implement it on top of the current
> SM> completion UI.  To a large extent, it boils down to the same.

there's a fair bit of logic in iswitchb (and ido) to work with specifics
of buffer switching (e.g. whether to show it in same window/other
window, new frame).  Is that in icomplete.el?  Likewise, little niceties
like deleting buffers (with C-k).

>
> There's a lot of user code and many libraries built on top of ido.  If it's
> obsoleted down the line I hope there is an effort to preserve the
> current interfaces and behavior to minimize breakage.  Is that the
> plan?

Yes, that's my hope too -- we use 'ido' extensively now in ESS for one.

What is the best way for me to test the iswitchb-like behaviour with
icomplete?

Stephen


> [0] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-11/msg00507.html
> [1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-12/msg00103.html