MH-E folder completion

MH-E folder completion

[Bill Wohler]

Hi Stefan,

I'm *finally* getting around to testing your completion code that you
added to MH-E. Your original outline was:

    1- use completion-in-region (new in Emacs-23.2) instead of
       mh-complete-word 
    2- change the completion tables to obey the completion-boundaries,
       which should also make them support partial-completion (e.g.
       complete +a/b/c to +alt/bob/calls).

The second feature sounds very useful, and it even seems to be working!
Which is amazing because you didn't have MH with which to test.

I'll be testing your fallback code on XEmacs21 momentarily, but first I
share to share one observation and discuss it. The old behavior looked
like this:

    Visit folder (default +inbox): +lists/TAB

    Possible completions are:
    +lists/acm		+lists/alerts/
    +lists/all-battery	+lists/aob
    +lists/appframework	+lists/aquadivelog
    ...

However, the new behavior looks like this:

    Visit folder (default +inbox): +lists/TAB

    Possible completions are:
    acm 	alerts/ 	all-battery
    aob 	appframework 	aquadivelog
    ...

I think the old behavior looks more natural to an MH user since you're
building up a folder string that you could pass to an MH command.

I'm guessing that the Emacs folks would say that the latter behavior is
better for Emacs users, and that the complete folder string can be
viewed in the minibuffer. Yes?

I'd like to open up the discussion to Emacs and MH-E developers to
ensure that the new behavior is preferable for MH users and Emacs users
alike, and if not, what the appropriate behavior should be. Thanks.

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com> aka <Bill.Wohler@nasa.gov>
http://www.newt.com/wohler/
GnuPG ID:610BD9AD

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security 
threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes 
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Re: MH-E folder completion

[Mike Kupfer]

Bill Wohler wrote:

> However, the new behavior looks like this:
> 
>     Visit folder (default +inbox): +lists/TAB
> 
>     Possible completions are:
>     acm 	alerts/ 	all-battery
>     aob 	appframework 	aquadivelog
>     ...

You know, I think I'll like this better than the current behavior.
(Though it's hard to say for sure without trying it for a bit.)

First, it's consistent with the completion behavior for, e.g., dired.

Second, it makes more efficient use of the completions window,
especially for those of us with deeply nested folders.

cheers,
mike

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable.
Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security 
threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes 
sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2

Re: MH-E folder completion

[Stefan Monnier]

> The second feature sounds very useful, and it even seems to be working!
> Which is amazing because you didn't have MH with which to test.

Actually, I did install nmh at some point to test a few things ;-)

> However, the new behavior looks like this:

>     Visit folder (default +inbox): +lists/TAB

>     Possible completions are:
>     acm 	alerts/ 	all-battery
>     aob 	appframework 	aquadivelog
>     ...

Given the current completion code, it's difficult to have both
"+lists/acm" in the *Completions* buffer as well as +a/b/c complete to
+alt/bob/calls.


        Stefan

Re: MH-E folder completion

[Bill Wohler]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:

> > The second feature sounds very useful, and it even seems to be working!
> > Which is amazing because you didn't have MH with which to test.
> 
> Actually, I did install nmh at some point to test a few things ;-)
> 
> > However, the new behavior looks like this:
> 
> >     Visit folder (default +inbox): +lists/TAB
> 
> >     Possible completions are:
> >     acm 	alerts/ 	all-battery
> >     aob 	appframework 	aquadivelog
> >     ...
> 
> Given the current completion code, it's difficult to have both
> "+lists/acm" in the *Completions* buffer as well as +a/b/c complete to
> +alt/bob/calls.

Given this information, and given that I've only heard support for this
change, I'll update MH-E's unit tests and documentation if necessary to
accept this behavior. Thanks for the feedback!

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com> aka <Bill.Wohler@nasa.gov>
http://www.newt.com/wohler/
GnuPG ID:610BD9AD

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable.
Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security 
threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes 
sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2