RE: Any infrastructure to select one of a few options in Emacs core?

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

> > completing-read
>
> Yes and no.  I thought about it, and rejected the idea: I want all the
> options to be visible without pressing TAB.  Also, each option might
> need more than one line (and the number of lines may vary between
> options), so I don't like the idea of using minibuffer at all.

It's still not clear from your description what you mean by "select"
one of the options.

Please specify how commands such as `customize', `customize-apropos'
do not do what you want.

`M-x customize-apropos-options RET .* RET', for example, shows you all
currently defined options, together with their doc string first line
(and full information if you expand an option description).

---

Emacs used to also have a command `edit-options', which listed all
options with their doc strings, and which had these keys:

 Options mode:
 Major mode for editing Emacs user option settings.
 Special commands are:
 s -- set variable point points at.  New value read using minibuffer.
 x -- toggle variable, t -> nil, nil -> t.
 1 -- set variable to t.
 0 -- set variable to nil.
 Changed values made by these commands take effect immediately.

 Each variable description is a paragraph.
 For convenience, the characters p and n move back and forward by
 paragraphs.

This feature was removed before Emacs 22, however.