RE: completion.el users?

["Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> >> I think auto-complete-mode is superior to completion.el.
> >
> > Does it do what completion.el does (and more)?
> 
> It has a similar feature:
> http://auto-complete.org/doc/manual.html#candidate-suggestion

1. Is auto-complete-mode part of Emacs?  I don't think so.  Let's not divert the
thread, if not.  The question is whether Emacs already contains a reasonable
replacement for completion.el.

2. Looking at the auto-complete-mode doc and demo, it's not clear to me that it
is comparable to completion.el.  It certainly does many things that
completion.el does not do.  (It is also quite large - multiple directories and
files.)  But I don't see that a-c-m actually does what completion.el does.  Can
you confirm that it does?

I understand that you can create a dictionary for a-c-m of terms you use.  And I
understand that a-c-m does lots of useful things wrt completing programming
entities that it knows about.  And it records the counts and use times of
_completions_ that you use.

But what about the completion.el use case?  Does a-c-m record ordinary words (as
well as programming constructs) that you type and thus consider them future
completion candidates?  IOW, does simply typing text, or moving the cursor over
text, suffice to turn the words typed or traversed into completion candidates?

That is the feature that completion.el provides.  I did not see that expressed
in the auto-complete-mode doc or demo.

E.g., if you were writing an essay or some documentation, does hitting a key
complete a word that you start typing, based on words you have used previously
(including during past sessions)?  From the doc I couldn't tell.

That is what completion.el does well.  Please read the complete Commentary of
completion.el (which is just a bit more than what I posted).