Re: Navigating completions from minibuffer

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>
> Cc: sbaugh@catern.com,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2023 09:44:45 +0200
> 
> >> >   *** Selected completion candidates are deselected on typing.
> >> >   When a user types, point in the *Completions* window will be moved off
> >> >   any completion candidates.  'minibuffer-choose-completion' ('M-RET')
> >> >   will still choose a previously-selected completion candidate, but the
> >> >   new command 'minibuffer-choose-completion-or-exit' (bound by
> >> >   'minibuffer-visible-completions') will exit with the minibuffer
> >> >   contents instead.  The deselection behavior can be controlled with the
> >> >   new user option 'completion-auto-deselect'.
> >> >
> >> > What are "selected completion candidates"?  I typed "C-x C-f TAB", and
> >> > Emacs popped the completions buffer, but without "selecting" any of
> >> > the candidates.  Searching for "select" in the buffer produced by
> >> > "M-x apropos complet RET" doesn't seem to find anything pertinent.
> >> > And there's nothing about this in the manual.  What am I missing?
> >>
> >> Maybe a better term would be "a highlighted completion candidate"?
> >> This should denote a candidate where point is located in the
> >> *Completions* buffer.
> >
> > Thanks, but I still don't think I follow.  How do I get this situation
> > where a completion candidate is "highlighted" or "selected", starting
> > from typing a command like "C-x C-f" and then typing TAB?
> 
> C-x C-f TAB TAB M-<down>
> 
> Then e.g. DEL (<backspace>) will "deselect" the highlighted candidate.

Thanks, I tried to improve the documentation using the above
information.

Btw, I notice (with some sadness) that we are largely back to our
previous practice of not updating the manuals with information about
changes.  This has two adverse consequences:

  . the release cycle of the next major release will take longer
  . the manuals included in the next major release are more likely to
    be inaccurate and/or incomplete

People who complain about too slow release schedule of Emacs should
take note, and hopefully invest more effort in the future in updating
the documentation together with code changes.