Re: icomplete-vertical above prompt

[Juri Linkov]

>> I wonder how easy would be to improve Icomplete to display completions in
>> the standard buffer *Completions* instead of the minibuffer? Then both
>> use cases will be covered:
>>
>> 1. icomplete-vertical-mode for users who prefer vertical completions in
>> the minibuffer;
>>
>> 2. vertical completions in *Completions* for users who don't like when
>> the mode-line jumps up and down when completing.
>
> Note that this doesn't happen with the default resize-mini-windows value,
> which is grow-only.  It jumps up once, and will not jump down until the end
> of the completion.

Regardless of the value of icomplete-vertical-mode-above-prompt,
in both cases it jumps once, and that's the problem for users
who don't like such jumps, even once.

Also if the number of completions is less than the default 10,
then a lot of empty lines separate completions from the minibuffer.

>> In this case the same icomplete keys could be used to navigate
>> completions in the *Completions* buffer from the minibuffer with
>> icomplete-forward-completions and icomplete-backward-completions, and
>> icomplete-force-complete-and-exit to accept the selected completion.
>
> By popular demand (Stefan M asked for something similar some time ago
> IIRC), here is a patch that does what you want, but not exactly how you
> described it.  It displays completion candidates above the prompt instead
> of below the prompt, and you can navigate them from the minibuffer.

I don't remember a request for such feature, but I remember complaints
about the jumping mode-line.  icomplete-vertical-mode-above-prompt
doesn't solve this problem.