Re: C-r and C-s in minibuffer should search completion

[Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org>]

>>> BTW, once this is done, we can revert the recent change to the
>>> `read-buffer' that adds all the buffers to the list of defaults.
>
>> Why?
>
> Because it's a special case and I'm not convinced it's justified.

The intention of adding a list of default values was to allow selecting
more than one default value extracted from the context of the command.
So after running a command the user can type M-n to see if the first
proposed default value is that the user likes.  If not, the user can
then type M-n again to see the next proposed value and accept it
or type M-n to see a few next useful values.

However, I agree that putting all buffers pushes this features to the
extreme because then the list of defaults is the same as the completion
list.  But there is one significant difference: the list of defaults is
sorted by recency, so switching between several work buffers (more than
two) is much easier with `C-x b M-n M-n M-n RET'.

OTOH, searching the completion list would be useful in itself
independent of searching the history list or the list of defaults
because often these three are disjoint sets, and the list of defaults
can be presented even when the completion list is empty.

> I expect most people who like this will prefer iswitchb anyway.

iswitchb radically changes the user interface of the minibuffer, so
I highly recommend providing most features of iswitchb to the users
who don't like the user interface of iswitchb.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/