Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Steven Degutis]

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Currently I use this code on emacswiki (
http://emacswiki.org/emacs/InteractivelyDoThings#toc20) for making ido-mode
vertical. It's much easier to visually parse than horizontal mode. But ido
wasn't meant to be done vertically, so some things are a bit strange.

For example, if you've typed enough to narrow it down to one candidate, it
shows up on the same line as what you're typing, instead of the line below
it like it would if there were at least two candidates. Changing the 5th
element of ido-decorations to show up on the next line isn't a legitimate
solution because sometimes that's used to visually wrap around a partial
match, which ends up looking very confusing and strange on the next line.

How hard would it be to change/edit/hack ido-mode to work more naturally
when showing results vertically, maybe as an official option of ido-mode,
or a fork?

I've tried helm, and it's way too overkill for this small task. It's much
too heavyweight, uses buffers and leaves them sitting around, and does way
too many things. Now ido-mode is *almost* perfect for completion and
narrowing when used vertically. It just has a few quirks because it was
never imagined to be used this way by the developers.

-Steven

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Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Stefan Monnier]

> I've tried helm, and it's way too overkill for this small task. It's much
> too heavyweight, uses buffers and leaves them sitting around, and does way
> too many things. Now ido-mode is *almost* perfect for completion and
> narrowing when used vertically. It just has a few quirks because it was
> never imagined to be used this way by the developers.

On a related note: it might be interesting to change icomplete.el such
that it can display the completions using a tooltip frame rather than
"inline" in the minibuffer.


        Stefan

Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:30:14 -0400
> 
> it might be interesting to change icomplete.el such that it can
> display the completions using a tooltip frame

Yuck!  Tooltip frames are ugly, especially if they are large.

Why not pop up a GUI dialog instead?  We already show File Chooser in
some situations.

Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Stefan Monnier]

>> it might be interesting to change icomplete.el such that it can
>> display the completions using a tooltip frame
> Yuck!  Tooltip frames are ugly, especially if they are large.

I don't see what makes them particularly ugly.  I don't claim they're
ideal for the job at hand, but they might be "the closest" we have (tho
maybe we could use a standard frame, and be extra careful to strip its
mode-line, header-line, tool-bar, menu-bar, ...).

> Why not pop up a GUI dialog instead?

I don't see how that could work for icomplete (which displays remaining
completion candidates in an unobtrusive way).


        Stefan

Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Steven Degutis]

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These ideas seem like overkill. The current technique ido-mode uses is
great, it just could use a different visual representation when displayed
vertically, that's all. I'm sure it can't be that hard, maybe forking
ido-mode and hard-coding it would be sufficient.

-Steven


On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:58 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>wrote:

> >> it might be interesting to change icomplete.el such that it can
> >> display the completions using a tooltip frame
> > Yuck!  Tooltip frames are ugly, especially if they are large.
>
> I don't see what makes them particularly ugly.  I don't claim they're
> ideal for the job at hand, but they might be "the closest" we have (tho
> maybe we could use a standard frame, and be extra careful to strip its
> mode-line, header-line, tool-bar, menu-bar, ...).
>
> > Why not pop up a GUI dialog instead?
>
> I don't see how that could work for icomplete (which displays remaining
> completion candidates in an unobtrusive way).
>
>
>         Stefan
>
>
>

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Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Tom]

Steven Degutis <sbdegutis <at> gmail.com> writes:

> These ideas seem like overkill. The current technique ido-mode
> uses is great, it just could use a different visual
> representation when displayed vertically, that's all. I'm sure
> it can't be that hard, maybe forking ido-mode and hard-coding
> it would be sufficient.

In that case it would make more sense to use Helm. Helm uses a
vertical display by default, so the best solution would be to
create some kind of a bridge between them, so that ido provides
the backend and Helm the frontend.

Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Steven Degutis]

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Helm is way, way overkill. I tried it for months and I can't get used to
it. It does too many things, has too many options, leaves buffers lying
around whenever you use it. But the way ido-mode works is quite perfect.
All except this one little visual detail that I'm thinking is probably easy
to fix.

-Steven


On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Tom <adatgyujto@gmail.com> wrote:

> Steven Degutis <sbdegutis <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
> > These ideas seem like overkill. The current technique ido-mode
> > uses is great, it just could use a different visual
> > representation when displayed vertically, that's all. I'm sure
> > it can't be that hard, maybe forking ido-mode and hard-coding
> > it would be sufficient.
>
> In that case it would make more sense to use Helm. Helm uses a
> vertical display by default, so the best solution would be to
> create some kind of a bridge between them, so that ido provides
> the backend and Helm the frontend.
>
>
>
>

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Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Steven Degutis]

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Looks like I might be able to just change `ido-completions` in some minor
places to accomplish what I'm looking to do. Then if it seems legit, maybe
I can submit it as a patch to emacs. Although, that process sounds more
painful than it should be.

-Steven


On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Steven Degutis <sbdegutis@gmail.com> wrote:

> Helm is way, way overkill. I tried it for months and I can't get used to
> it. It does too many things, has too many options, leaves buffers lying
> around whenever you use it. But the way ido-mode works is quite perfect.
> All except this one little visual detail that I'm thinking is probably easy
> to fix.
>
> -Steven
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Tom <adatgyujto@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Steven Degutis <sbdegutis <at> gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > These ideas seem like overkill. The current technique ido-mode
>> > uses is great, it just could use a different visual
>> > representation when displayed vertically, that's all. I'm sure
>> > it can't be that hard, maybe forking ido-mode and hard-coding
>> > it would be sufficient.
>>
>> In that case it would make more sense to use Helm. Helm uses a
>> vertical display by default, so the best solution would be to
>> create some kind of a bridge between them, so that ido provides
>> the backend and Helm the frontend.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

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Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Stefan Monnier]

>> >> it might be interesting to change icomplete.el such that it can
>> >> display the completions using a tooltip frame
[...]
> These ideas seem like overkill.

I didn't mean it as "the solution to your local problem".

I just think it's a good idea in itself, and your request reminded me of
it.  Such a "completion list in a frame/box" is already implemented in
a few different ways for auto-complete/company-mode.

> The current technique ido-mode uses is great,

Agreed, it's very lightweight yet effective.  And the trick you use to
display it "one per line" is neat and works surprisingly well (I was
afraid it would cause the text to jump around too much).  I'd welcome
a patch that makes it work for icomplete-mode as well.


        Stefan

Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Steven Degutis]

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Turns out that the patch was simple enough. Only 3 lines of code in ido.el
needed to change. Now to figure out how to submit a patch :'(

-Steven


On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>wrote:

> >> >> it might be interesting to change icomplete.el such that it can
> >> >> display the completions using a tooltip frame
> [...]
> > These ideas seem like overkill.
>
> I didn't mean it as "the solution to your local problem".
>
> I just think it's a good idea in itself, and your request reminded me of
> it.  Such a "completion list in a frame/box" is already implemented in
> a few different ways for auto-complete/company-mode.
>
> > The current technique ido-mode uses is great,
>
> Agreed, it's very lightweight yet effective.  And the trick you use to
> display it "one per line" is neat and works surprisingly well (I was
> afraid it would cause the text to jump around too much).  I'd welcome
> a patch that makes it work for icomplete-mode as well.
>
>
>         Stefan
>
>
>

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Re: Better vertical-ness in ido-mode?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Turns out that the patch was simple enough. Only 3 lines of code in ido.el
> needed to change. Now to figure out how to submit a patch :'(

M-x report-emacs-bug can be used for that.


        Stefan