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

[Philip Kaludercic]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>
>> Cc: dgutov@yandex.ru,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2021 18:14:02 +0200
>> 
>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>> 
>> >> But this raises a more general question, of whether selecting-read and
>> >> completing-read should be drop-in replacements of one another.
>> >
>> > I think they should strive to, because it's conceivable that we will
>> > have a user option to determine which one to call where currently we
>> > call completing-read.
>> 
>> But why should that mean that both interfaces should be identical?  It
>> seems cleaner to instead have a sr->cr translation layer, as to prevent
>> unnecessary dependencies between the two interfaces?
>
> I don't understand what you mean by "translation layer".

completing-read has it's existing interface, and let's say that
selecting-read would not try to copy this interface 1:1. Instead a third
function could attempt to "translate" completing-read calls into
selecting-read calls, reducing the complexity of selecting-read.

I hope I'm not the only one, but writing "nil nil nil nil" just to
access a specific argument is cumbersome, and harder to extend. If it is
possible to keep a new interface cleaner, I think that this would help
it be more forwards-compatible.

-- 
        Philip K.