Re: Ordering of command completions

["Óscar Fuentes" <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> the vast majority of noise on M-x comes from packages
>> distributed with Emacs.
>
> Just what noise are we talking about?
>
> Are you referring to the fact that there can be many commands
> that match your minibuffer input?  If so, then the answer
> (IMHO) is better completion behavior.  Packages such as
> Icicles and Helm let you narrow things down quickly.

I use Ido+flx. Yes, as you type the number of candidates quickly
decrease from thousands to dozens, but my experience is that the
vast majority of candidates are not applicable on the current context
and they force you to type quite a bit more.

Then we have non-predictability. You enable a mode through an autoloaded
function and suddenly, for the rest of the Emacs session, `M-x foo' no
longer resolves to the same list of candidates where it used to.

[snip]

> Certainly any command that is bound to a key sequence that
> is available in the current context should be a candidate.
> (That's a minimum.)

IMHO introducing ad-hoc heuristics for *discarding* candidates is very
risky. OTOH, if it is a matter of sorting the candidates, which is what
the OP suggested, it is fine. However, certain completion systems (such
as Ido+flx) wouldn't benefit from that sorting, in the general case.

[snip]