[RP] Re: Completion

[Henrik Enberg]

Shawn Betts <address@hidden> writes:

[Sorry bout the late reply]

> Henrik Enberg <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Gergely Nagy <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> >> Tab completion is one of the nicest UI inventions ever, so I'd say it is a
>> >> natural fit for Ratpoison.
>> >
>> > Indeed, tab completion can be very useful!
>
> It can?? Tell me, how often do you need to tab complete commands? What
> sort of commands are you people using? Speaking for myself I rarely
> type any commands except in my .ratpoisonrc file. All the frequently
> used commands are bound to keystrokes and if they aren't you can bind
> them. I really don't see why we need to tab complete command names.

Not commands so much, but I use programs and windows completions a
_lot_.  And when you already have those two in the source (for reasons
of speed, efficency and memory conservation), command completion is just
30 more lines of code. 

>> > However, this is the kind of thing that can perfectly be implemented
>> > outside of RP. Simply write up an X application, that displays a
>> > ratpoison-like input bar, and utilise libreadline (for example) to do
>> > the dirty work of completion. Much less hassle to code, methinks. And
>> > won't bloat RP much :)
>> 
>> I must say that this is a very strange notion of bloat.  Not uncommon,
>> but still strange.  To do this outside of ratpoison one would have to
>> duplicate hundreds of lines of code, including keeping track of what
>> commands ratpoison has.  So, all this plus more memory usage, slower
>> speed, harder to maintain and possibly less functionality just to save
>> less that 500 lines of self-contained code in RP?
>>
>> Personally, I feel that would be more bloated.  When considering such
>> things I think you need to take the whole system in account and not just
>> a single app.  
>
> He's got a good point, Gergely.
>
> But seriously guys. Tab completing commands? What are you, hard up for
> writing code? You're going to have to provide me with a damn slick
> argument to get tab completion into the source. But...I'm willing to
> put something in that will list all the possible commands.

No, I did this stuff just because I _don't_ want to write a lot of
code.  Writing an external prog, I'd have to duplicate a lot of code
already in place.  Not to mention that you'd have call "ratpoison -c"
twice just to select windows.

> We're going to have to fork ratpoison here pretty soon if this sort of
> thing keeps up into ratpoison proper and fatpoison.

I'm not interested in forking.  I just want completion.  And an embedded
Common Lisp interpreter.  Besides, calling it fatpoison would be a lie.

-- 
Booting... /vmemacs.el