It would be good to "standardize" bindings - say
reserve `M-w' (e.g. on a prefix key) for the
"copy-region" (or similar) action
I remember you had a key to grab the region into the minibuffer.
This is what Ergus wants.
I don't think this thread is about grabbing the region
text into the minibuffer. Ergus grabs it into Isearch
as the search string.
And I don't think I have a command that grabs the
region into the minibuffer.
Maybe the same key, e.g. 'M-.' could be used to grab
the region into the search string, into the query-replace
prompt, or into the minibuffer?
Maybe.
If you meant `M-.' then maybe you were thinking of my
binding of `M-.' in Icicles. It does pull buffer text
into the minibuffer (appends it there, so you can use it
to insert multiple things into the same minibuffer).
It really has nothing to do with completion (hence with
most of the rest of Icicles) - you can use it with any
minibuffer, whether reading with or without completion.
My `M-.' does not pick up the text of the active region,
however (it could be made to, but it doesn't do that now).
Instead, it picks up existing buffer text starting at
point (either or both directions). You can pick up
multiple consecutive occurrences of a given kind of
thing, or you can pick up a given kind of thing,
choosing the kind by cycling among THING choices.
The doc is here:
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Icicles_-_Inserting_Text_from_Cursor
Perhaps it can serve as food for thought. It would be
simple to integrate the possibility of picking up the
region text when the region is active, as an alternative.