Re: on helm substantial differences

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>
> Cc: spacibba@aol.com,  bugs@gnu.support,  andreyk.mad@gmail.com,
>   emacs-devel@gnu.org,  contovob@tcd.ie,  rudalics@gmx.at,
>   monnier@iro.umontreal.ca,  ghe@sdf.org,  drew.adams@oracle.com
> Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 22:35:48 +0200
> 
> > Why doesn't name2 get aligned? I still don't think I understand that.
> 
> The caller is 'read-char-by-name', and it creates two completion strings
> "character1 (\t with :align-to) name1" and "character2 (\t with :align-to) 
> name2",
> and sends them to 'completion--insert-strings' that adds "\t with :align-to"
> as a separator between two columns.
> 
> How "character2 (\t with :align-to) name2" could predict the right value
> of this 'align-to' if it doesn't know what value of 'align-to' will use
> 'completion--insert-strings' in its separator?

Ah, okay.  Would it work to change read-char-by-name to generate
strings "character1 TAB name1" and "character2 TAB name2", and then
make completion--insert-strings to produce a suitably calculated
(SPC with :align-to) separator between them?  Then all you'd need to
do is set tab-width in the completions buffer.