Re: [PATCH] (icomplete-vertical-mode): Add support for affixations and, annotations

[Stefan Monnier]

> I see, broken windows.  You keep asking for good API's but when things
> are proposed in that direction "that's good" but doesn't matter.

[ Remember that the whole design of Emacs and ELisp goes against the
  usual software engineering practice of using encapsulation and
  abstraction to modularize the code so that one part can't mess with
  the other.

  Instead, Emacs's idea of empowering users means that for one part to
  be able to mess with another is considered a feature rather than
  a bug, and the "abstraction boundaries" are enforced by conventions
  rather than by technical means.

  As a dependent-types kinda guy, I sometimes find it odd as well, but
  I think it has served Emacs surprisingly well, so I tend to try and
  keep following the same design, despite my natural leaning
  against it.  ]

> As to the current shape affixation-function, I'm not mortally against it
> just that its misdesign is a bit jarring, but so are so many other parts
> of the completion system, so I guess, broken windows.  It's just that
> this is supposed to be a new part.

The part of `affixation-function` which I find problematic is the fact
that it does the layout itself, whereas I think it would be better to do
it in the UI (so it can choose to use columns or not, to put it at the
beginning or at the end, etc...).

The fact that it takes a whole list rather than a single element is more
in the "bikeshedcolor" category for me.


        Stefan