Re: xref-find-matches and stuff

[Vitalie Spinu]

 >>> Eli Zaretskii on Sat, 09 May 2015 21:49:07 +0300 wrote:

 > Files don't intersect; your rectangles did.  So I still don't
 > understand what that picture was supposed to illustrate.

Let me try it again. A rectangle is a set of all places where each
backend collects its locations. For Imenu set of all open buffers. For
tags all files tagged. For repls all loaded files. Would you be happy
with this definition?

 >> Anything what you can infer from around your current location is
 >> context. Symbol at point is context, current major mode is context,
 >> whether the buffer is visiting a file is context.

 > OK, but how's that relevant to the issue at hand?

You asked what context means. The relevant part is that you cannot infer
backend on the context.

 >> The xref initiative is essentially to make a supernatural M-. that would
 >> be able to infer where to go (B) from the context around current point
 >> (A). People seem to think that xref can achieve that by choosing the
 >> backend first and then rely on that backend to give you B. But choosing
 >> the backend based on the context is a meaningless task.

 > Who said a back-end is selected solely based on context?

People want M-. to operate without additional user's input, if that's
what you mean.

 >> > Also, I don't understand why would TAGS not know about A.  It doesn't
 >> > miss definitions, IME.
 >> 
 >> REPLs knows about dynamically created objects about which TAGS have no
 >> idea.

 > Why would I need to "jump" to such an object?  I've just created it,
 > so it's right here, where I did that.

Jump to a tag and them jump to "foo". Of course you want to jump to
"foo", it's the most jumpable symbol around.