Re: Question to completion

[Klaus Berndl]

Thanks a lot, Ehud, your code works very well. But in the meanwhile i have
found a solution for myself. Could you please compare yours with mine and tell
me which is better and why? In general my solution seems to be a little hack -
your seems cleaner...

(defun ecb-offer-choices (prompt choices)
  "Prints PROMPT and returns a string which must be one of CHOICES.
CHOICES is a list of strings whereas the first choice is the default. All
choices are immediately displayed as if completion does it so a selection can
be made either with the mouse or with the keyboard."
  ;; First we create a TAB-event
  (let ((event (if ecb-running-xemacs
                   (make-event 'key-press '(key tab))
                 9)))
    ;; With these 3 TAB-events we ensure that
    ;; 1. The longest possible common substring is display in the minibuffer
    ;; 2. All possible completions are displayed
    (dotimes (i 3)
      (setq unread-command-events (cons event unread-command-events))))
  (let ((answer (completing-read
                 prompt
                 (mapcar (function (lambda (x) (list x t)))
                         choices)
                 nil t)))
    (if (string= answer "")
        (car choices)
      answer)))

The advantage of my solution is that in the minibuffer autom. the longest
possible completion is displayed (in your example this would be the following
minibuffer-content:
"Select a name: Klaus"

Ciao,
Klaus

On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Ehud Karni wrote:

>  On 08 Nov 2003 13:52:06 +0100, Klaus Berndl <klaus.berndl@sdm.de> wrote:
> >
> > Suppose i have s command like follows:
> >
> > (defun offer-some-choices ()
> >   (interactive)
> >   (completing-read "Select a name: " '(("Klaus" . t) ("Berndl" . t))))
> >
> > Then this displays in the minibuffer "Select a name: " and then wait for
> > input from the user.
> >
> > How can i achieve that always - *without* the user has to hit TAB - the
> > possible completions are displayed immediately?
>  
>  You have 2 choices:
>    1. Run the function corresponding to [tab] 3 times (by preloading the
>       keyboard buffer or by adding it to `minibuffer-setup-hook'.
>       This will make some extra displays and has built in delay.
>    2. Defining a simple function to display all possible completions
>       and adding it to `minibuffer-setup-hook'.
>  
>  Here is the function and an example to the 2nd solution:
>  
>  (defun minibuffer-all-completion ()
>         (with-output-to-temp-buffer "*Completions*"
>             (display-completion-list (all-completions ""
>             minibuffer-completion-table))))
>  
>  ;; An example.
>  (defun offer-some-choices ()
>    (interactive)
>         (let* ((minibuffer-setup-hook
>                      (append minibuffer-setup-hook
>                      '(minibuffer-all-completion))))
>             (completing-read "Select a name: "
>                     '(("Klaus" . t) ("Klaus-2" . t) ("Klaus-3" . t)))
>             ))
>  
>  Ehud.

-- 
Klaus Berndl                    mailto: klaus.berndl@sdm.de
sd&m AG                         http://www.sdm.de
software design & management    
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