Emacs 21.1: icomplete-mode prematurely inserts completion options

[Francis Litterio]

In Emacs 21.1, when icomplete-mode is on, irrelevant incremental
completion data appears in the minibuffer before the user types even one
character.

To reproduce:

1. Evaluate this Elisp to turn on icomplete-mode: (icomplete-mode)

2. Type "M-x".

3. icomplete-mode fills the minibuffer with an enumeration of all
   possible command names before user types anything.  This is a useless
   display of command names without regard for the subset in which the
   user is truly interested.

It would be better for the minibuffer to remain empty of incremental
completion data until at least one character is typed (and an
examination of the code reveals that this was the intention of the
programmer).

The below patch to icomplete.el fixes this problem.
--
Francis Litterio
franl-remove@world.omit-this.std.com


--- /c/apps/emacs-21.1/lisp/icomplete.el.orig   Fri Feb 22 16:49:18 2002
+++ /c/apps/emacs-21.1/lisp/icomplete.el        Fri Feb 22 16:49:30 2002
@@ -260,7 +260,7 @@
              (make-local-variable 'icomplete-eoinput))
          (setq icomplete-eoinput (point))
                                         ; Insert the match-status information:
-         (if (and (> (point-max) 1)
+         (if (and (> (point-max) (minibuffer-prompt-end))
                   (or
                    ;; Don't bother with delay after certain number of chars:
                    (> (point-max) icomplete-max-delay-chars)