Re: Time to consider/try Helm?

[Boris Buliga <boris@d12frosted.io>]

In the nutshell, ivy and helm are both completion frameworks. What I like
about
them is the ability to create custom actions for completion target. Which
means
that when you do `C-x C-f` you can use `return` to visit a file, some other
key
binding to rename a file, to visit in a split buffer etc.

Since they both provide great completion and allow to define custom
actions, I
use them to create programs with ivy/helm as UI. In a lot of cases the most
important task of UI is to narrow down to the actions/targets.

In my sense, ivy is more compact and less intrusive than helm. But I highly
advice to try them both to make a decision.

On Tue, 30 Oct 2018 at 12:20, YUE Daian <sheepduke@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2018-10-30 04:21, Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> My journey was vanilla -> Ido -> Icicles -> Ivy.
> >>
> >
> > Completely naive question, but what do these packages provide? I've been
> > using Emacs for 30+ years and I've never heard of any of them. I guess I
> > need to get out more.
> >
> > Skip Montanaro
>
> These packages are "completion frameworks".
>
> For example with helm, when you hit `M-x` and type something, it pops up
> a buffer and list all possible matched commands, from which you may
> select or do more actions.
>
> The same process applies to other operations, including but not limited
> to `C-x C-f`, `C-h v` etc etc.
>
> Some helm extensions provides more interfaces for interacting with `ag`,
> `locate` etc etc.
>
> In a word, they change the way Emacs provides completion selections.
>
> IMHO they are great packages that highly improve efficiency when you
> need to search/query/complete anything inside Emacs.
>
> Danny
>
>

-- 
Cheers,
Boris