Re: A package in a league of its own: Helm

[Óscar Fuentes]

solidius4747@gmail.com writes:

>> How difficult is to add a new completion command to helm? Such as
>> 
>> providing it with a list of strings and complete on it?
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Can helm use other completion matching methods, such as flx? I regard
>> 
>> flx as more convenient than helm's default matching system.
>
> It should be easy. I've never tried to provide custom source but if
> you use existing Helm sources, it's very easy to craft your own.

I guess that you are talking about the difficulty of adding a new
completion command here.

> For
> me, I prefer Helm's way. That is, I can directly enter a filename, and
> narrow down it later if more than one candidates are displayed.
> Compared with ido + flx, I have to precisely remember the structure of
> something and enter it follow the correct order. For example, I can
> enter test.c and hundreds of them might exist. I can narrow down
> further by specifying the path incrementally later. With Ido, I always
> have to remember the path for fuzzy completion. Helm gives me greater
> flexibility; with flexibility, it gives greater explorability in a
> huge source. You should read the section "Why Helm is powerful" above.

Okay. I have a different view here (and your description of flx
requiring to precisely remenbering the structure of your target is not
accurate, in my experience.) I would never switch from ido+flx if the
alternative does nor provide the same fuzzy matching capabilities. After
investigating a bit, the bad news is that incorporating flx into helm is
not easy at all. The good news is that there are a significant interest
on doing it, including flx's author. Let's see how this evolves.

Thanks for answering my questions.