Re: xref "find references" and grouping

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 05/04/2015 04:10 PM, Vitalie Spinu wrote:

> Note that sorting with trees is not so straightforward. Depending on
> sorting criteria you will get a very different trees in terms of inner
> structure.

You can still have a sorting command, and sort the output when it's a 
tree. The process would admittedly less obvious than with a tabulated 
list widget, though.

> Trees also tend to waste a lot of space and are more demanding

Again, we heavily disagree about what a waste of space is. In my mind, 
repeating the same value certainly qualifies.

> cognitively because you need to figure out where one tree starts and
> where it ends. As the "height" of each tree is different that could be a
> rather hard task unless you use a clear delimiter between trees. But
> that means using additional vertical space for delimiters.

There's no need for delimiters, I think. Just use different faces for 
group headers, and hope that tree branches of different lengths won't 
happen too often.

> One huge advantage of flat displays is that you can narrow candidates on
> whatever component. So you can simply use selective display like occur,
> helm-occur or ivy to narrow your buffer. You cannot do that with trees.

That's an advantage, yes. However, how are you even going to fit the 
xref-find-references output in a tabulated list? It contains full lines. 
If you put them in a column, the rest of the columns will surely overflow.