Re: Feature request : Tab-completion for 'shell-comand'

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Juri Linkov wrote:
> > > the Isearch error message overwrites the minibuffer content, but with this
> > > patch it appends the error message to the end of the minibuffer, e.g.
> > >
> > > I-search backward: foo [Failing I-search backward: bar]
> > Maybe it would be good to show the message before the prompt and on its
> > own line? That way it could perhaps easily be made read-only etc.
> >
> > It also seems to be a rather natural place to show it - at least if you
> > are used to command line tools.
>
> I don't understand what do you propose.  Currently the error message
> is already before the prompt and looks like:

It was me that did not understand, sorry. I suggested adding the 
messages to the prompt, but as Stefan pointed out this does not work if 
the minibuffer only has a single line available.

Reading the thread more carefully I see that you have found that the 2 
seconds delay when using minibuffer-message can be very disturbing. How 
about redesigning that part, something like this:

- If there is an old minibuffer-message "active" then immediately remove 
this and put a copy in the *Message* buffer.
- Then display the new minibuffer-message.

> Failing I-search backward: bar
>
> but overwrites the minibuffer content.  With `minibuffer-message'
> it looks like:
>
> I-search backward: foo [Failing I-search backward: bar]
>
> If necessary, we can make the error message shorter like:
>
> I-search backward: foo [Failing: bar]

Looks good to me.

> Anyway, to show the failed search string is more important than
> the minibuffer content.

And the suggestion to make minibuffer-message fallback to just message 
if the minibuffer is not active seems useful.