Unlike auto-complete-mode, Emacs's default completion system is rock-solid. :-) auto-complete uses some pretty messed up popup display library that doesn't play well with many packages. company-mode is much better in this regard.

I guess I'm so used to the default completion system that I don't see it as something primitive and hard to work with. That said, it might not be a bad idea to include a "more modern" completion system in Emacs itself, but I'd opt for simplicity and reliability over fancy UIs.

On 18 November 2013 18:13, Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> wrote:

In "(emacs.info) Completion Commands" there is help for using the
rudimentary buffer to select completion matches. I was struck by how
hard to use this was, compared to more recent packages like these:

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AutoComplete
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CompanyMode

Is there any chance the default Emacs appearance for selecting
completion matches can be improved (not necessarily by default) for
24.4? I would help with this but don't know what's "state of the art"
and if there's already work in this direction.

Thanks
Ted