Re: BIKESHED: completion faces

["João Távora" <joaotavora@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 11:52 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> > From: João Távora <joaotavora@gmail.com>
> > Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 11:20:30 +0000
> > Cc: Ergus <spacibba@aol.com>, emacs-devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>,
> >       Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>, Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> >
> > On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 6:57 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> >
> > > By "reversal" I mean that the part we highlight is the part that
> > > matched what the user typed, and the part we don't highlight is what
> > > the user might type to narrow the search.  We currently do the
> > > opposite.
> >
> > Yes. You call this an inconsistency, I don't.
>
> I call this "reversal".  I guess we now agree about this part, whereas
> previously you said there was no reversal.

By "reversal", I understand reversing the application
of the two faces in the 'basic' completion style. I
proposed that, but I withdrew it.  I think Stefan's
original proposal, the very first one that started the
thread, also goes in this direction somewhat. In my
"reversal" proposal, no new faces or aliases need
be added.

By "consistency" I am talking about 'prefix' and
'flex' both highlighting the pattern's characters in
the same face. The reverse, "inconsistency", means
that 'prefix' chooses to highlight the first difference,
and 'flex' chooses to highlight the pattern's characters.
I _don't_ call this "reversal" (though you may, in which
case we need a new word to describe the situation I
explained in the previous paragraph). My "renames"
proposal, which differs from my "reversal" proposal,
brings about this "inconsistency", which I think,
in relative terms, is a drawback dwarfed by the
advantages.

So, to me,  these are two separate things.

> > Or maybe I could call it that, but the value that arises from
> > accepting it is greater than the drawbacks, IMO.
>
> I object to making this the default behavior, because it's the exact
> opposite of what we do now.  I already suggested to make what you want
> an optional behavior, but AFAIU you rejected that, not sure I
> understand why.

Because it is already an optional behaviour. I wrote "we already
have that: themes".  That's the reason. I for example
use M-x customize-face to fix the situation and unless the
situation advances, I will advise users of flex to do the same.
There's no point in adding anything more, IMO.

João