Re: Why fido, icycles, ido, icomplete

[Ergus]

On Thu, Nov 07, 2019 at 12:27:48AM +0000, João Távora wrote:
> Ergus <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > Thanks for the answer it is very clarifying for me now. Maybe you should
> > add all this information somewhere in the documentation.
>
> *all* this informatino is a bit much, don't you think, but there is
> already documentation.
>
> > I actually have very strong feelings behind ido in 2019 (I know I am a
> > sort of apostate for this). But I think it is something that needs to be
> > removed/deprecated/substituted for the good of newer alternatives like
>
> The idea of fido-mode is indeed to obsolete ido mode.  But it's still a
> bit far away.  And removing is yet another matter: i don't think there's
> any harm in having ido.  Of course, if fido-mode ever becomes a perfect
> superset of ido, and removing it proves mostly harmless, OK I guess.
Yes, I know

> > The intention is to move the users to the newer functionalities so they
> > can get the best possible first impression.
>
> I agree with this.  But I don't agree with the "newer" = "best
> possible".  These things take time to settle and one of the strong
> points of Emacs is, paradoxically, its resistance to change.  Its like a
> movie theater where there are only classics playing.  Lots of grainy
> footage but all movies are superb.
Yes, but nobody feels impressed by the special effects in the first Star
Wars today, in spite of they were amazing in their moment and required
much more effort than newer movies.

My point is that many new functionalities are implemented for a reason
and hide or limit them because of backward compatibility is senseless. 

> > I think Abo-abo actually tried to modify ido to improve it and he
> > finally ended implementing ivy... was easier that way.
>
> And I found icomplete.el, which is already in Emacs.
ivy is also based on icomplete actually.

> > I will pray you to do the same for ivy... please please...
>
> Well, I did very little.  The author did all the work.  I and Stefan
> helped (mostly Stefan in the last part).  The evolution is registered
> here https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/issues/2165.
>
> You can point Ivy's author to this thread.
I done.

> > think ivy is now much better integrated than helm before, but for sure
> > there will be things missing you could help to improve.
>
> > > still annoyingly (and legitimately) there, and we can't just change
> > > icomplete-mode's defaults like that.
> > I have never used icomplete... so I don't know what ido provides that
> > icomplete can't. So where is the gap? Is a part of the gap fixed in helm
> > or ivy for example?
>
> You are miscommunicating: the "gap" is whatever doesn't quite work in
> icomplete-mode to make it work just like ido-mode.  It's the behaviour
> of RET, C-k, C-d and some other things.
Could you add at least the cycle with arrows as in ido?

> > Maybe this paragraph should go in the manual in the ido section
> > suggesting to switch to fido in order to improve fido as much as
> > possible and deprecate the actual ido implementation in the future... (I
> > have a dream, please don't burn me for this "A man can dream... a man
> > can dream")
>
> There's already a paragraph in the manual.
>
>       An alternative to Icomplete mode is Fido mode.  This is very similar
>    to Icomplete mode, but retains some functionality from a popular
>    extension called Ido mode (in fact the name is derived from “Fake Ido”).
>    Among other things, in Fido mode, ‘C-s’ and ‘C-r’ are also used to
>    rotate the completions list, ‘C-k’ can be used to delete files and kill
>    buffers in-list.  Another noteworthy aspect is that ‘flex’ is used as
>    the default completion style (*note Completion Styles::).
>    ‘
>       To enable Fido mode, type ‘M-x fido-mode’, or customize the variable
>     fido-mode’ to ‘t’ (*note Easy Customization::).
>
> I also put something in NEWS.
>
> You (or anyone else) can propose changes it, if you want.  I put it in
> the icomplete section because it's really very closely related to
> icomplete-mode.  Maybe I could add a reference to the ido-mode manual
> (just discovered it exists).
>
> Don't know how to do inter-manual references, though, this one is
> emacs/buffers.texi the other is misc/ido.texi.
I don;t know if it is possible; but it should be, otherwise at least
mention it in the other.

> João

Best,
Ergus