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

[Heime <heimeborgia@protonmail.com>]

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------- Original Message -------
On Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023 at 9:27 AM, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:


> > It is a deficiency on the part of completing-read that makes
> > INITIAL-INPUT unaware of COLLECTION and of REQUIRE-MATCH.
> 
> 
> M-x report-emacs-bug
> 
> But specify clearly what you have in mind,
> that is, what you think you want.
> ___
> 
> INITIAL-INPUT is text to put in the minibuffer
> at the outset. It need not have any connection
> with anything. It need not ever be entered or
> even edited. It can be just a message "Happy
> Birthday!", if you like.
> 
> INITIAL-INPUT has nothing, a priori, to do with
> completion, hence with COLLECTION or with
> REQUIRE-MATCH.

That's its design, but the design is too primitive
and only works in isolation to everything else.

Suppose you want INITIAL-VALUE to be aware of COLLECTION and
of REQUIRE-MATCH.  You can't.  Suppose you want INITIAL-VALUE
to match entry in collection.  Then suppose INITIAL-VALUE is
identical to first element in collection, and you want to skip 
the first entry in collection that would currently show the same
string as INITIAL-VALUE.  You can't.  A half baked implementation
that now some want it to do even more things.  

First one has to make a good job and do it well before complicating
things further.
 
 
> Read the doc. Experiment. Try to understand
> how each arg can be used in different ways.