Re: propose adding Icicles to Emacs

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    In some important cases, it is not enough to recuperate the string used in
    *Completions* as the return value from `completing-read'. In those cases,
    Icicles must recuperate the entire raw candidate value from the TABLE
    argument

I can see how that can be so.

    One way that Icicles does this (the best way, when it is possible) is to use
    the number (i.e. index) of the candidate in the TABLE arg. This index
    corresponds to the order of candidates when cycling and the order of the
    candidates in *Completions*.

That makes sense for a list or an alist, but how do you make that work
for an obarray or hash table?  You could scan it in a canonical order
to convert numbers to elements; is that what you do?

    To simplify, think of `icicle-candidate-alist' as the TABLE arg to
    `completing-read'.  `icicle-filter-alist' filters this alist, keeping only
    those candidates that are current (i.e., whose strings are currently
    displayed in *Completions*).

I think the right way to handle these features is to implement
those that we decide we want in minibuf.c.