dotfiles-misc/protesilaos.dotfiles
1
0
Fork 0
mirror of https://github.com/protesilaos/dotfiles.git synced 2026-09-10 07:16:20 -04:00
Code Issues Actions Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

emacs: add commentary about what makes generic completions not good enough

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
Protesilaos Stavrou 2025-12-13 16:59:37 +02:00
parent 440618744a
commit dad0eff2a1
No known key found for this signature in database
GPG key ID: 99BD6459CD5CA3EA
1 changed files with 40 additions and 0 deletions
Show stats Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

40
emacs/.emacs.d/prot-emacs.org
View file

@ -4337,6 +4337,46 @@ These do not come into effect unless ~prot-emacs-completion-ui~ is set
to a ~nil~ value or when we are not using any package for in-buffer
completion (such as the ~corfu~ package).
For a few days around early December 2025 I tried to use the following
setup exclusively on the Emacs 31 development target. It mostly works
and is better than it used to be, though there are several important
limitations:
- The eager update (recalculate the results as you type) is noticeably
choppy. I could improve it by making the function
~completions--background-update~ do a ~sit-for~ a few miliseconds,
but was not happy with this.
- The built-in =minibuffer.el= package lacks focus. There are options
that support conflicting workflows. One is a =TAB=-intensive
approach, where =TAB= triggers the display of completions, switches
to that buffer, and cycles through the results. Another way is to
set the user option ~minibuffer-visible-completions~ to a non-~nil~
value, which makes the cursor stay in the minibuffer and you select
a completion from there without switching to the =*Completions*=
buffer. Compounding the problem are confusingly named variables like
~completion-show-help~ and ~completion-auto-help~, which mean
completely different things. Even after setting all this up and
trying it full-time for several days (plus me maintaining ~mct~ for
years), I still do not know exactly what I need to configure to get
a consistent experience.
- The ~find-file~ navigation makes it harder to select a directory.
Whether with the =TAB=-centric workflow of its alternative, when I
do something like =~/G/P/= followed by =TAB= and then =RET= I expect
to navigate to a ~dired~ buffer that shows =~/Git/Projects/= (this
is possible thanks to the ~partial-completion~ style ([[#h:14b09958-279e-4069-81e3-5a16c9b69892][The =prot-emacs-completion.el= settings for completion styles]])).
Instead it takes me to =~/Git/= or, more precisely, to whatever the
top candidate is in the completions buffer. That candidate is not
even highlighted when I do all this!
Of course, I can keep adding functions to make things work the way I
want, but it ultimately is not worth it. Vertico is robust, super
fast, focused, and still highly configurable. My ~mct~ package is
there just because I started it all those years ago, before ~vertico~
was a thing and before the generic completions got most of what ~mct~
offers.
- [[#h:f012a254-2716-4c29-a64b-c2b3df34f57f][The =init.el= option to load a minibuffer user interface]]
- [[#h:cff33514-d3ac-4c16-a889-ea39d7346dc5][The =prot-emacs-completion.el= submodule for ~vertico~ (=prot-emacs-vertico.el=)]]
- [[#h:e9fb09f0-f2e6-4943-83bf-e5fadcfa530a][The =prot-emacs-completion.el= submodule for ~mct~ (=prot-emacs-mct.el=)]]