Re: handling many matches

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: drew.adams@oracle.com, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, jonas@bernoul.li,
>  emacs-devel@gnu.org, philippe.vaucher@gmail.com, adam@alphapapa.net,
>  kyle@kyleam.com
> From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> Date: Sat, 2 May 2020 19:13:18 +0300
> 
> On 02.05.2020 16:52, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > If by "look" you mean to the user, then I envision a list of
> > completion candidates that somehow "knows" what I'm after, and places
> > those likely guesses near the beginning of the list.
> 
> All fuzzy completion systems do that. Generally by scoring how well each 
> string resembles the input string.

That criterion alone is not enough, IME.  It is also important
(sometimes much more important) what I'm doing, in what major mode,
my previous completion attempts, etc.

> > Like I said, I think the hopes it will deliver a significant enough
> > improvement are overrated.  It will certainly bloat the lists of
> > candidates by factors, which is why I think it isn't a very good idea
> > as long as we don't have some smart scoring of candidates.
> 
> The amount of "bloat" will be strictly limited by the number of aliases 
> we add.

Yes, and I tend to think we will add a lot.

> I think there's a general agreement that we shouldn't go overboard.

Even if there is such an agreement, I'm not sure we will be able to
keep ourselves from going overboard.

> > We need scoring that "learns" from what I do/did recently,
> > and from my habits.  Otherwise the list of candidates will remain
> > hopelessly long, with no promise of having what I'm really looking for
> > anywhere near the beginning.
> 
> There are systems like that, including in third-party Emacs packages. 
> Personally, I'm not fond of the idea (the unpredictability, first of 
> all), and I'd rather we polish the current scoring algo first.

When the first few candidates are what I want, predictability goes out
the window.  I'm a happy user when I find what I'm looking for fast.