RE: [External] : Continue cycling from a particular element in collection

[Heime <heimeborgia@protonmail.com>]

------- Original Message -------
On Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023 at 9:04 AM, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:


> > > > I am using 'completing-read' with INITIAL-INPUT to prefill the
> > > > minibuffer
> > > > with the first entry "alpha". Hew can I then start at index k from
> > > > collection
> > > > as the next entry.
> > > 
> > > There is NO "next entry". INITIAL-INPUT is simply a string that gets
> > > inserted in the minibuffer. It need not correspond to any candidate
> > > provided by argument COLLECTION, meaning that it need not correspond to
> > > any completion.
> > > 
> > > `completing-read' can be LAX, meaning that, if REQUIRE-MATCH is nil or
> > > absent then it accepts any text you input - it need not be a completion
> > > candidate.
> > 
> > Ok, but can I ask completing-read to start from
> > a different point in collection, rather than
> > from the beginning ?
> 
> 
> Dunno. I'm no expert on vanilla Emacs cycling,
> and I'm not sure what kind of cycling ("next entry")
> you have in mind.

By 'Next Entry' I mean what shows up after INITIAL-INPUT
is shown after pressing <down>.  
 
> If you're using argument DEFAULTS to provide a list
> of "entries" then you can of course sort it (or
> truncate it) however you like, to affect the "future
> history".
> 
> If you're using a HISTORY variable and cycling the
> (past/real) history then I suppose you could sort
> (or truncate) its value.
> 
> But entries in neither DEFAULTS nor HISTORY need be
> elements of COLLECTION.
> 
> If you meant the "future history" elements that are
> provided by the misfeature of automatically adding
> everything in COLLECTION to that pseudo-history,
> then no, AFAIK there's no way to filter, sort, or
> truncate the elements from COLLECTION that get added.
> 
> But maybe there will be now, since I think they're
> considering adding some option that may help here -
> dunno.
> 
> Maybe someone else will have a useful suggestion.