bug#51819: The Senselessness of Emacs Company Mode

[irenezerafa <irenezerafa@protonmail.com>]

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Tuesday, November 16th, 2021 at 11:24 PM, irenezerafa <irenezerafa@protonmail.com> wrote:

> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
>
> On Tuesday, November 16th, 2021 at 10:48 PM, Carlos Pita carlosjosepita2@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > > I did not know this. Thought company is the OOTB one, than an external thing.
> > >
> > > How does one use the auto-completion you are discussing?
> >
> > This is described in the manual:
> >
> > https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Symbol-Completion.html
>
> > Be aware that it's not a fancy popup that updates itself while you're
> >
> > typing, instead it's more like what you get in bash. Nevertheless:
>
> It is the mini-buffer thing. It is not so easy to go through and make the selections
>
> though. Emacs cam be quite straining on the fingers.
>
> > -   The protocol is already there, when you install company most of the
> >
> >     things work OOTB because of the core protocol. Of course if company
> >
> >     adds extra features on top of it there is no way this could be
> >
> >     supported without installing further company-.* extensions as the ones
> >
> >     you listed at the top, but there is ample consensus not to do
> >
> >     that without good reason and alternatives have already emerged with
> >
> >     core APIs full-compatibility as a strong guiding principle. I
> >
> >     encourage you to visit the projects in https://github.com/minad/,
> >
> >     especially vertico, consult, embark, marginalia and corfu. You don't
> >
> >     need to install anything, just read about them and decide, you can
> >
> >     pick only the parts that you're interested in. I've only installed
> >
> >     corfu for now because I find the child frame nicer and more
> >
> >     convenient than the default UI, but I could easily live without
> >
> >     that.
>
> > -   The protocol is already very customizable without installing
> >
> >     anything else. See for example the variable completion-styles. You can
> >
> >     set it to flex for fuzzy matching. You mentioned you're using
> >
> >     orderless: it also leverages this core mechanism in order to provide
> >
> >     a different completion strategy.
>
> >     So, as you can see, there is more here than you first thought, it's
> >     not really "haphazard evolution".
> >
>
> > > once something becomes a fundamental functionality (e.g. completion),
> > >
> > > evolution should move consciously after some time.
>
> > I hope I've convinced you this is indeed what's happening. Indeed,
> >
> > most of what I've described has been there for many many years.
>
> Am glad to hear it. From about Emacs 28 things are quite better than
>
> distributions whose repositories still ship with Emacs 25 or earlier.
>
> > > I use ivy, company and orderless.
>
> > ivy implements its own protocols, be aware that there is a world of
> >
> > ivy-.* stuff too. Also be aware that some of the packages in
> >
> > https://github.com/minad/ are alternatives to ivy (it's not another
> >
> > case of NIH though, because the idea is to stick to the roots for
> >
> > good).
>
> > ivy can do completion-at-point too:
>
> > https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/57fnar/ivy_completion_at_point_in_an_overlay/
>
> > Maybe that's enough for your needs so you don't have to install anything else.
> >
> > Best regards,
>
> I am very interested in completion of words as I write documents. Although coding
> related stuff is also handy. I customarily have key bindings to switch between orderless,
> ivy, company. All depending on the work at the time.
>
> Thanks Carlos

Dear Carlos, what is the best completion there is that is immediately available
after installing emacs.  I recommend a completion implementation that is available
automatically by default, but which uses a popup window as provided by either
auto-complete or company-mode as a start.

There are significant advantages with completion popups which go beyond the just fancy.
Popups are more productive from the rapidity of completion point of view.

Another aspect is to improve the ease by which I can include the equivalent to running
functions by including them in the menu-bar, in contrast to keybinding commands.
As one writes more functions, it becomes more difficult to remember tho keybindings
one defined for each user-defined functionality.