Re: [External] : Re: Question about completion behavior

[Ergus]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2022 at 11:14:56PM +0000, Drew Adams wrote:

Hi Drew:

Man, please relax...

> Doesn't sound like it - not regarding what I
> asked about, at least.
>
> I have nothing against keeping *Completions*
> showing and updating it as a user changes the
> pattern to match (and either explicitly asks
> for a rematch or has elected to get automatic
> rematching).
>
> In fact, I invented such behavior for Emacs
> (a couple decades ago).
>
> But why would we not _remove_ *Completions*
> when there are no matches?
>
> We tell users in the echo area that there are
> no matches.  Why also show an empty buffer,
> for nonexistent completions, with a redundant
> message there saying there are none?
>
> (That's IBM's "This page intentionally left
> blank."  But at least there was a reason for
> that notice.)
>
> Maybe "the new code is simpler".  It sounds
> like the new user experience is less simple
> - and maybe a step backward.
>
> I understand your feature would be optional.
> It sounds like it has room for improvement.
The user experience is exactly the same than before.  Just that now
there is an option to change, suppress or/and get a counter with the
total number of completions where there was before just a bit
superfluous hard-coded message: "Possible completions are:"

That's it. Everything else is exactly the same. As usual, I am not doing
rocket engineering here; I am just adding something simple and obvious
that nobody wanted to give any attention before; in spite of many more
experienced lispers like you could implement this in 30 minutes two
decades ago ;p.

> > > Why would we ever say "0 possible completions"?
> > >
> > > Why bother with "possible"?  We never show
> > > IMpossible completions, do we?
> > >
> > > When there are no matches we just tell users
> > > there's no match.  Always have.  Simple.
>
> And your answer is?

Because the original message was: "Possible completions are:" and it has
been there since ever without hearing your complains about that the
completions are not IMpossible.

I don't care anything about one word at all and if the user doesn't like
the word or you want to put there "Drews completions are:", at least now
you have an option to customize it as you prefer...

Best,
Ergus