RE: Looking for universal completion with simple UI

[Drew Adams]

> Drew - The one unresolved issue for me is simplicity: the
> documentation for Icicles spans dozens of pages on emacswiki.org.

Earl - The doc starts with a 14-sentence "README for NON-Readers":  
http://www.emacswiki.org/Icicles_-_Nutshell_View#READMEforNonReaders

After the first 7 sentences, the 8th is "You now know enough to
use Icicles."  And the 9th is "If you have doc-phobia or are easily
overwhelmed by explanations, then read no more - just try it!"
I stand by that.

The rest of that page is an overview of Icicles, with examples.
If you are up to reading more than 14 sentences then that nutshell
view is the next level of help.  You can stop there too.

You do not need to read lots of doc to use Icicles.  The fact that
there *is* lots of doc does not mean that you need to read it all.

> Even after using it for a few months, I'm still surprised and
> turned-off by some of the defaults.

Too vague to be helpful, but OK, your preferences differ from the
default behavior.  Nothing wrong with that.

And you have been using it for a few months but you still don't
feel comfortable with it.  That's OK.  People are different.
Thanks for trying it.  Sorry it doesn't fit your needs.

Icicles is not for everyone.  (Nor is Emacs, for that matter.)
And those who do use Icicles use it in very different ways and
have different preferences.  (Likewise, Emacs.)

> ... a simpler interface and smoother learning curve.

Please address particular issues or suggestions *specifically*,
using `M-x icicle-send-bug-report'.

It is trivial for a user to remove all top-level Icicles key
bindings from the equation, by just setting option
`icicle-top-level-key-bindings' to nil.

If you do that, and if you never use `S-TAB' to complete, you never
repeat `TAB' to cycle among completion candidates, and you never
bother with any of the special minibuffer keys (which are anyway
not bound in vanilla Emacs or are otherwise not useful in the
minibuffer), then the behavior you get is pretty close to that of
vanilla Emacs.  And you can toggle `icy-mode' to return to vanilla
Emacs anytime.

No one is required to use Icicles or find it helpful or useful.
Emacs is much bigger than Icicles.  Happy hacking.