RE: [External] : Re: Stepping Back: A Wealth Of Completion systems Re: [ELPA] New package: vertico

[Drew Adams]

> cycling through a collection of buffers, displaying
> one buffer per second, and letting the user hit RET
> when they see the one they want?

This kind of thing is already available, with just
`completing-read'.  You can show anything as visual
candidates.  With Icicles, for example, you can show
image files as their thumbnails in *Completions*.
(Or show their names; or show both.)

You don't need to type input to match the file names -
you can just cycle through the (thumbnail) candidates
and hit RET to choose one (or hit `C-RET' to choose
any number of them).  You don't need to know or care
what their names are.  The same applies to choosing
Unicode chars or whatever - you don't need to match
their names.

[You could also attach sounds to candidates, so that
when you cycle to one you hear its sound.  Pretty
much anything you can sense could be used to choose.
(And pretty much anything you can input could be
used to filter.)]

But you also _CAN_ match their names.  And that's
super important.  You can filter names to narrow the
field of things you cycle through to choose from.

Cycling is _not_ the most wonderful way to choose
things.  Don't be a cycling drone!  Use pattern
matching (and maybe predicate filtering) to narrow
the set of things you then cycle among.

And, at least with Icicles, you can UN-narrow the
current narrowing level, and then narrow differently.
So you can cycle among different sets of candidates
(from the initial domain).

> Okay that sounds awful, but flexibility is good.

It's not awful, even if it might sound so.  It's
just one more tool.  And yes, flexibility is good.

But let's not underestimate the value of pattern
matching against "string" candidates.  Nothing
beats that (as someone else said in this thread).