Re: [PATCH] Support "\n" in icomplete-separator

[Gregory Heytings via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>]

>
> I'd say this much more bluntly: Emacs's minibuffer input was not 
> designed for showing too many completion candidates, let alone show them 
> vertically arranged.  It was even less designed to display the 
> candidates or other hints in overlays.
>

Well, Emacs wasn't designed to manage emails or browse the web either ;-) 
Both are several orders of magnitude more complex than displaying 
completion candidates.

>
> Users come from other GUI applications, and expect a very different way 
> of showing completion candidates than Emacs traditionally does.  they 
> want a UI which is akin to a combo box, sometimes even with scroll 
> capability.
>

Did you try Ivy?  I don't use it, but it seems to me that it comes close 
to what you describe.  If Ivy can do it, there is no reason that icomplete 
or ido couldn't do it.

And, FWIW, I'm a user, and I do not expect a "very different way of 
showing completion candidates".  That being said, I'm perhaps not a 
typical user; I don't know.