Re: icomplete-mode vs. iswitchb

[Dmitry Gutov]

Stephen Eglen <address@hidden> writes:

> Well, I don't recall many  complaints about ido vs iswitchb -- most
> people were happy to use one or the other.  Probably more people use
> ido, as it offers more features.  But I have just tested this:
>
> (setq ido-mode 'buffer)
> (ido-mode 1)

Setting aside the fact that it doesn't do what you intended (ido-mode
ends up set to `both', see this variable's docstring for details), if it
did, the users would end up with less functionality than if they use
icomplete-mode, which provides completion suggestions in all cases where
Emacs knows how to complete - not only buffers, but files, functions,
variables, etc.

If we enable ido-mode for both buffers and files, we:

- Still don't get completions in other cases (though there's a
  third-party package for that, called ido-ubiquitous).
  
- Present users with a somewhat complicated behavior in `find-file'
  case. Off the top of my head, opening a non-existent file with name
  similar to one existing file is non-intuitive: I don't think we want
  to force users to look through documentation for that `C-j' binding.