Re: Interactive guide for new users

[Ergus]

On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 04:43:33PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2020 15:18:02 +0200
> > From: Ergus <spacibba@aol.com>
> > Cc: ghe@sdf.org, casouri@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> >
> > >"Spirit" is not what's important here, IMO.  What's important is the
> > >visual appearance and the available actions and their effects.  What I
> > >see out there is similar to Company, and quite different from
> > >icomplete-mode, even when augmented by the vertical sub-mode.
> >
> > We have xref-find-apropos and completion-at-point. But icomplete use is
> > totally different to company.
> >
> > icomplete is more a minibuffer completion engine useful while tipping
> > commands, of lookign for files. There a company panel is uncomfortable.
> >
> > While company-mode is a "suggestion menu" while editing. Maybe our error
> > have been to consider both as a single "feature".
>
> We are miscommunicating.  I said "similar to Company", meaning that
> the completion drops down a vertical list of candidates that overlays
> the rest of the display.  AFAIK, no existing completion package offers
> something similar.

Sorry to bother with this. But I don't see how what you describe defers
from Company. I mean, what is missing in company or what is different
from your desired behavior?

I agree that company needs some work, maybe check the bindings and the
default colors.

> So either we implement something similar (and
> offer it in that initial tour as an option), or we have to live with
> the fact that users will not find in Emacs completion that they expect
> to see.  In the latter case, I wonder why icomplete is deemed a step
> in the right direction, for reasons I already described: it's too
> complicated and confusion, IMO.

icomplete is the best we have embedded. If we don't add avy + counsel we
need to improve it as much as we can for the OOTB experience without
external packages. Compared to ido it integrates much better, is simpler
and uses all the new completion infrastructure.

With some minimal changes icomplete emulates ido with much simpler
code. IMO it is the best embedded minibuffer completion we have that we
can improve easily.

At the end we will always need a completion engine for the minibuffer
anyway. Sooner or later the user will need an M-x.