Re: Emacs completion matches selection UI

[chad]

On 18 Dec 2013, at 23:53, Stephen J. Turnbull <address@hidden> wrote:

> chad writes:
> 
>> Do we really need to debate the need for wheels at all?
> 
> There is no such debate.  The debate is about what constitutes a good
> wheel.  Ted thinks a good wheel is one which non-Emacs-users will feel
> comfortable with.  I think, and AIUI Stefan does too, that a good
> wheel for Emacs is one which extends or consolidates Emacs traditions,
> even if in CUAland or libreadline coordinates they look ellipsoidal.

Thank you both, Stefan and Stephen, for first-class responses to
what (upon re-reading) sounds like a fairly intemperate question.
It was nicer than I probably deserved, and I appreciate it.

To Stephens point, I think that theres a fairly large, demonstrated
desire for some sort of wheel that looks and works a lot like (for
example) auto-complete:

        http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AutoComplete

We had a big discussion about this (same or very similar) topic
several months ago when talking about Emacs as IDE, especially
comparing Emacs and Eclipse. Im not %100 sure that this is what Ted
is asking after, but I think so. Id also like to see such a wheel
in Emacs, ideally built-in. The recent iswitchb/icomplete/ido
discussion and conversations with several programmers (some current
Emacs users, some ex-Emacs users) suggests to me that this is a big
deal for potential Emacs users. Maybe its not desired or important
for most established Emacs users; I dunno.

Even for an external package, the iswitchb/icomplete/ido discussion
suggests that its pretty important to get an idea about the future
direction of the related pieces that are in Emacs, to avoid building
a big wheel that doesnt fit. Begging your indulgence, this suggests 
three big questions:

* Can we get a solid consensus on whether or not this sort of thing
  is desirable in Emacs?

* If we think it’s a good idea to enable, should it be inside Emacs or
  in some external package?

* If we think its a good idea to enable, what do we need in order to
  make it compatible with Emacs internal directions and reusable for
  multiple packages? 

I hope this helps. Thanks again.
~Chad