Re: Completions in Semantic

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> If you look at semantic-read-symbol, it does what you suggest, and
> builds a table from the current buffer, and passes the whole thing into
> completing-read.  That's ok for a single buffer, but not when you want
> some symbol from anywhere in your project.  Of course, there is a basic
> assumption that the user will do something like your example below,
> typing in some prefix, before pressing TAB.  If the prompt comes up and
> the user presses TAB right away, then there is no win.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, but it seems what you
describe can be done as well with the "standard" completion mechanism,
since the completion-table can be a function.

E.g. Info-complete-menu-item builds the table dynamically, using the
prefix to try and build a smaller table, and reusing the previously
built table if the completion is in the same context as the last one and
the earlier prefix is a prefix of the new one.

> Anyway, semantic-read-symbol works fine unless there are multiple
> symbols with the same name, thus, a second thing that made me write my
> own completion code is that tags are a little special, since they have
> both names, and spacial data.  Sometimes, two tags are only different
> based on their spacial data.  For example, when jumping to a tag, if
> there are many hits with the same name (such as "window" in your example
> below), you can press TAB several times, and it will flash where you
> would jump to if you hit return, allowing you to differentiate.

That would require some custom completion code, indeed, since the
current completion does not offer any hook for such things.  Of course,
we could add such a hook, but we'd need to figure out where/how to
do it.


        Stefan