Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

>> Maybe using an affixation function (like read-char-by-name) would make
>> things less jarring?  E.g. fontifying the same string for every face
>> (say "x" or "example") and using that as suffix (rather than prefix, to
>> keep the face names aligned)?
>
> Hm, yes, that sounds like a good idea.

Serving suggestion attached, for discussion purposes; there might be
smarter things to do wrt alignment (using :align-to specs?  let-binding
tab-width?).

FWIW it looks pretty good with icomplete-vertical-mode, IMO.