bug#43572: Feature request: make it possible to choose whether the first lines of the minibuffer should be displayed instead of the last ones

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2020 16:09:25 +0000
> From: Gregory Heytings <ghe@sdf.org>
> cc: 43572@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> > That is true, but read_minibuf enters recursive-edit, and while that is 
> > active, any call to resize_mini_window will be affected.
> 
> This seems to be a really minor problem.  What kind of problems could 
> happen because during a recursive edit while icomplete or ido or ... is 
> active, redisplay is asked to start displaying at BOB?  Do you really 
> believe this could lead to a non-minor problem?

Yes.  There are third-party packages out there that do unimaginable
things when the user is prompted to enter his/her choice of something.

And in any case, we don't want to rely on luck in these matters, IME
the Murphy laws are very strong here.

> > Using a text property for this is easy and mostly boilerplate, and it 
> > completely avoids this issue.
> 
> Then I wonder why this did not happen earlier (and wonder when it will 
> happen).  A bug report about this exact problem has already been filed 
> five years ago (bug#24293).  Five years ago.  And the patch I'm proposing 
> is less than ten lines long, and would be most welcome today.

It didn't happen for the usual reasons: no one felt motivated enough
to sit down and do it.

Can I convince you to try implementing this via text properties?  The
code will be very simple, I promise.  And we are here to help if you
are unsure how to go about that.

> > I already explained why your design is problematic.  And so did Stefan.
> 
> No, Stefan helped me to improve my design.

He did both.