[RP] Re: Completion

[Henrik Enberg]

Gergely Nagy <address@hidden> writes:

>> Tab completion is one of the nicest UI inventions ever, so I'd say it is a
>> natural fit for Ratpoison.
>
> Indeed, tab completion can be very useful!
>
> However, this is the kind of thing that can perfectly be implemented
> outside of RP. Simply write up an X application, that displays a
> ratpoison-like input bar, and utilise libreadline (for example) to do
> the dirty work of completion. Much less hassle to code, methinks. And
> won't bloat RP much :)

I must say that this is a very strange notion of bloat.  Not uncommon,
but still strange.  To do this outside of ratpoison one would have to
duplicate hundreds of lines of code, including keeping track of what
commands ratpoison has.  So, all this plus more memory usage, slower
speed, harder to maintain and possibly less functionality just to save
less that 500 lines of self-contained code in RP?

Personally, I feel that would be more bloated.  When considering such
things I think you need to take the whole system in account and not just
a single app.  

> When done with input, this application would call ratpoison --command
> "whatever". Like an X front-end for ratpoison --command.. This is the
> kind of thing --command is for, isn't it?

Well, sort of.  But you can't find out what commands a particular
version of ratpoison implements.  So you'd have to keep a separate
version dependent list.

> Then, this could be bound to C-t :, and there you are! You won't even
> be able to distinguish it from the ratpoison input-bar.
>
> Unfortunately, I'm not versed in plain Xlib, but if anyone wants a
> helping hand with the readline part, I'm all for it!

Readline would be nice.  Not sure how useful it would be with these
quite simple completions.  Can it do stuff like completing arguments?

-- 
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