Re: Looking for universal completion with simple UI

[dont.spam.earl@gmail.com]

Drew, thanks for your response. Yes, I've been using it for a few months, iterating several times in reading the documentation, setting variables, and adjusting my workflow. In no way do I want to complain about or criticize Icicles. It's clearly very powerful - unique in enabling the user to interactively create and narrow sets of items to apply operations to.

I didn't mean my post to be a bug report, and I'm certainly not interested in changing how YOU use Icicles, or the standard interface you've developed. What I have in mind is much narrower: developing a set of customizations to the interface. As with other Emacs packages - and as you did with Icicles itself - I may want to share those customizations down the line if I think they form a coherent whole. That's the connection I was making to Emacs starter packages. They offer a variety of ways to get started with Emacs, and reflect different people's perspectives on how that can be done.

So I'm interested in hearing whether you have any concerns about this idea from the outset.

On Wednesday, October 8, 2014 9:49:14 AM UTC-7, Drew Adams wrote:
> > Drew - The one unresolved issue for me is simplicity: the
> 
> > documentation for Icicles spans dozens of pages on emacswiki.org.
> 
> 
> 
> Earl - The doc starts with a 14-sentence "README for NON-Readers":  
> 
> http://www.emacswiki.org/Icicles_-_Nutshell_View#READMEforNonReaders
> 
> 
> 
> After the first 7 sentences, the 8th is "You now know enough to
> 
> use Icicles."  And the 9th is "If you have doc-phobia or are easily
> 
> overwhelmed by explanations, then read no more - just try it!"
> 
> I stand by that.
> 
> 
> 
> The rest of that page is an overview of Icicles, with examples.
> 
> If you are up to reading more than 14 sentences then that nutshell
> 
> view is the next level of help.  You can stop there too.
> 
> 
> 
> You do not need to read lots of doc to use Icicles.  The fact that
> 
> there *is* lots of doc does not mean that you need to read it all.
> 
> 
> 
> > Even after using it for a few months, I'm still surprised and
> 
> > turned-off by some of the defaults.
> 
> 
> 
> Too vague to be helpful, but OK, your preferences differ from the
> 
> default behavior.  Nothing wrong with that.
> 
> 
> 
> And you have been using it for a few months but you still don't
> 
> feel comfortable with it.  That's OK.  People are different.
> 
> Thanks for trying it.  Sorry it doesn't fit your needs.
> 
> 
> 
> Icicles is not for everyone.  (Nor is Emacs, for that matter.)
> 
> And those who do use Icicles use it in very different ways and
> 
> have different preferences.  (Likewise, Emacs.)
> 
> 
> 
> > ... a simpler interface and smoother learning curve.
> 
> 
> 
> Please address particular issues or suggestions *specifically*,
> 
> using `M-x icicle-send-bug-report'.
> 
> 
> 
> It is trivial for a user to remove all top-level Icicles key
> 
> bindings from the equation, by just setting option
> 
> `icicle-top-level-key-bindings' to nil.
> 
> 
> 
> If you do that, and if you never use `S-TAB' to complete, you never
> 
> repeat `TAB' to cycle among completion candidates, and you never
> 
> bother with any of the special minibuffer keys (which are anyway
> 
> not bound in vanilla Emacs or are otherwise not useful in the
> 
> minibuffer), then the behavior you get is pretty close to that of
> 
> vanilla Emacs.  And you can toggle `icy-mode' to return to vanilla
> 
> Emacs anytime.
> 
> 
> 
> No one is required to use Icicles or find it helpful or useful.
> 
> Emacs is much bigger than Icicles.  Happy hacking.