RE: What completion mechanisms are you using?

[Drew Adams]

> I can't speak for the poster, but it seems like his q is similar to
> mine a while back.

Then the answer I gave should serve for you as well. You quoted the answer in
its entirety (not needed), but did you read it?

> ido has a nearly perfect io for files and buffers (and lots of things
> in org mode).  But it doesn't by default work with M-x (though there
> is code for that) and the rare other things.

FWIW, the other things are not rare. Completion is used throughout Emacs, not
just for `M-x', `C-x b', and `C-x C-f'.

If you don't believe me, just `grep' for `completing-read' in the `lisp'
directory and its subdirectories (*.el */*.el). In Emacs 22.3, that's over 500
calls, hardly any of which involve buffers. Do the same for `read-file-name' -
about half that many hits.

This doesn't imply much about relative usage, but it is an indication that such
"other things" are not rare in Emacs.

(This is the hammer => nail speaking again, IMO.)
 
> Therefore, since icicles seems so customizable, it's natural to wonder
> whether you can easily make it emulate ido, or, if not, work only with
> things that ido does not.  It sounds like the answers are "don't
> bother to try because you'll just get frustrated" and "no". Confirm?

I already answered this clearly and in detail.

Summary:

Icicles is not Ido.  It is not trying to be Ido.
The Icicles UI is intentionally different from the Ido UI.
If you want the Ido UI, use Ido.

If you want Icicles, you can still get similar features and behavior as in Ido.
If you want exactly the Ido behavior for files and buffers, please use Ido.

> Also, just out of curiosity (I won't be using icicles if it can't be
> made to work like ido :)) does the completions buffer work for people
> who set pop-up-windows to nil?

Yes.