Re: [PATCH] (icomplete-vertical-mode): Add support for affixations and, annotations

[Daniel Mendler]

On 5/25/21 12:07 AM, Juri Linkov wrote:
> The next step would be to allow the option 'completions-format'
> to accept an arbitrary frontend rendering function.  Then a new
> possible value could be added such as:
> 
> 4. completion--insert-multi-column
> 
> So when affixation-function will return a list of multiple columns,
> e.g. for buffers the same list of columns as used by list-buffers:
> '("C" "R" "M" "Buffer" "Size" "Mode" "File") from the backend,
> the new frontend rendering function completion--insert-multi-column
> will accept such a list of all columns, set it to the buffer-local
> variable 'tabulated-list-entries', and call 'tabulated-list-print'
> to render it in the output buffer *Completions*.

It would be great, if the backend can specify arbitrary custom columns,
maybe with some hints (desired width, if it is a prefix/suffix, etc).
Then we can define some "semantic names" as standard, which should be
understood by the frontend, as Dmitry proposed. But this can happen as a
second step. What kind of `affixation-function` are you proposing, one
that returns a plist? Would such a design be acceptable for João too?

Daniel