Re: Stepping Back: A Wealth Of Completion systems Re: [ELPA] New package: vertico

[Stefan Monnier]

> FWIW I've come to the same conclusion in the past: that using
> `completing-read' to select from a collection is essentially a (very
> gentle) hack. More than once I've implemented my own mini-versions of
> `selecting-read', and have always wanted something more general.
>
> This would also allow us to expand our idea of how a thing is chosen:
> instead of insisting that a string is completed, we could provide a more
> general framework for choosing a "thing", where the things don't
> necessarily have a meaningful string representation.

I kind of agree, yet at the same time, the difference between the two is
very small in most cases.  So I think it might be worthwhile to look at
it instead as making it possible for the caller to give a *hint* about
what kind of UI would be best.

It might deserve a completely new function to replace `completing-read`,
but I think it would be good to make this new function such that it
makes `completing-read` obsolete.


        Stefan