Re: Sorting Order of Completion Candidates

[Florian Beck]

On 03/01/2011 08:25 PM, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
> On Tue, 01 Mar 2011 19:22:47 +0100 Florian Beck<fb@miszellen.de>  wrote:
>
> FB>  On 03/01/2011 05:29 PM, Ted Zlatanov wrote:
> > > Florian: I've proposed a patch to use the string property
> > > :completion-score to attach a numerical score to the completion
> > > candidates.  The discussion so far is in the BBDB mailing list (where we
> > > needed to score completion candidates) but I will propose it on
> > > emacs-devel once Stefan reviews it.
>
> FB>  Nice idea. You mean text properties on the strings?
>
> FB>  So I would use something like
>
> FB>  (defun string-score-higher (a b)
> FB>    (if (>  (or (get-text-property 0 :completion-score a) 0)
> FB>          (or (get-text-property 0 :completion-score b) 0))
> FB>        a
> FB>      (string-lessp a b)))
>
> FB>  as a sorting predicate?
>
> FB>  Seems to work (so far),
>
> With my proposal it will be built into
> `completion-all-sorted-completions':
>
> - if both candidates have a :completion-score, lowest wins
>
> - if only one has :completion-score, it wins
>
> - else we sort by string length (shortest wins)
>
> Thus you don't have to craft custom sort predicates :)
>
> Ted

Hm, intuitively, I would think higher scored items come first.

Anyway, I tried modifying `completion-all-sorted-completions' but it had 
no effect, because the candidates are sorted in 
`minibuffer-completion-help'. I guess, you will override that -- but why 
sort there in the first place? All sorting should take place is 
`completion-all-sorted-completions', shouldn't it?

Also, both for reasons of performance and convenience, an option not to 
sort candidates at all might be desirable.

--
Florian