RE: Insert word at point in minibuffer

[Drew Adams]

> Thanks for some useful links.  I will definitely check out
> replace+.el and icicles.  Icicles in particular seems to
> offer a lot of functionality and thus may take some time to digest.

You don't need to consume and digest it all - just take a bite and see if you
like the taste.

It's like the rest of Emacs: you can dig deeper later if you want, but you don't
need to. You should be able to get some benefit right away, in complete
ignorance and with no practice.
        
> Will any of this stuff end up in Emacs itself?

I doubt it.

The good news is that it is easy to customize Emacs the way you like. Getting
others to agree that some of your customizations should be made part of vanilla
Emacs is a different ball game. But you can still share with others who do
appreciate them, and thanks to free source code and language extensibility it is
easy to do so. The Emacs Wiki is a great tool/medium in this regard.

> It seems to me some things - such as M-x query-replace
> suggesting a default where currently it does not - are just plain
> good ideas.

There are lots of good Emacs ideas (and bad) that never find their way into
Emacs.

If you are interested, please consider adding your voice to the discussions at
emacs-devel@gnu.org. If you do, don't get frustrated if you find that some of
your suggestions are not greeted with wild enthusiasm all around. Suggestions
are always welcome, especially from new sources, but the discussion can
unfortunately sometimes lead to more heat than light. Patience, perseverence,
and a thick skin help.