Re: can vertico approximate this ido setup?

[Tassilo Horn]

Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Samuel,

> but my initial attempts were worse than my ido setup.  i do NOT know
> what i am doing here.  but e.g.
>
>   - my selections are very wrong compared to clever match

Define "very wrong", e.g., with a screenshot of what you get and a
statement what you'd expect to get.

FWIW, I see that you put the flex and orderless completion style in
completion-styles.  You have to be aware that at least flex matches very
distant candidates, e.g., foo matches after-some-root.  Ok, that's the
purpose of the style but I think it's only useful if you place it at the
very end of completion-styles with more exact styles at the beginning,
e.g. (partial-completion substring flex).

Orderless can also be slightly confusing because fo-ba matches bar-foo.
Again, that's the purpose of the style but maybe it's also better used
later in completion-styles, e.g., it's much more exact than flex but
less so than partial-completion or substring.

Also, I have the experience that some completion styles work great for
one kind/category of completion but not for others, so I use
completion-category-overrides.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(setopt completion-styles '(partial-completion substring flex))

(setopt completion-category-overrides
        '((project-file
           (styles partial-completion substring initials))
          (file
           (styles partial-completion substring initials))
          (eglot
           (styles partial-completion substring))))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

>   - faces don't seem to get recognized when i specify them
>     - also i don't get variable pitch
>     - also i don't understand the completion-first-difference face

I go with the defaults (of my theme) so cannot comment on that.  I guess
that also completion-first-difference is not well-defined with styles
where matching is not anchored at the beginning of the candidate.  I
think it's always the character after the last matched character.

>   - have not tried consult yet
>   - embark uses more than window height or confuses
> [...]
> i am very limited in computer use, so before i try new things or
> search, i want to know if it is worth trying to configure vertico to
> work approximately like my setup.  my question is whether it is
> configurable to come close-ish to my ido.

I'd rather start out small, i.e., vertico / corfu / marginalia and add
more stuff (orderless, consult, cape, embark) later on if I feel that
I'm missing something here and there.  I think ido supports some special
things (creating directories, deleting files during file completion or
killing buffers during buffer completion?) which you could probably do
with embark but well...

Bye,
Tassilo