Is the Default Emacs Completion UI Good?

Glenn has created crafterbin which is effectively a hosted 0x0.st instance for the SC community and also provided an Emacs package for uploading files to it!

• https://crafterbin.glennstack.dev
• https://github.com/glenneth1/crafterbin.el

Foot has a new release out:

• https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot/releases/tag/1.23.0

We’ll look at Completion Options section of the Emacs manual:

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Completion-Options.html

We’ll also look at the Completion Commands section:

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Completion-Commands.html

• Turn off the help text to save space
• Control the max height of the completion window
• completion-preview-mode (global-completion-preview-mode)
• completions-detailed

It appears that the default behavior is to only show completion candidates when you press TAB or SPC or at any time by pressing ?.

Suggestion from pkal: Use M-x apropos-user-option to search for customization variables containing particular text like completion.* (even in docstrings!). Maybe bind to C-h u ?

(tool-bar-mode 0)
(menu-bar-mode 0)
(scroll-bar-mode 0)

(load-theme 'modus-vivendi-tinted t)

(repeat-mode 1)

(set-face-attribute 'default nil
                    :font "JetBrains Mono"
                    :weight 'normal
                    :height 170)

;;; Completions Configuration

(setopt read-buffer-completion-ignore-case t
        read-file-name-completion-ignore-case t

        ;; This *may* need to be set to 'always just so that you don't
        ;; miss other possible good completions that match the input
        ;; string.
        completion-auto-help t

        ;; Move focus to the completions window after hitting tab
        ;; twice.
        completion-auto-select 'second-tab

        ;; If there are 3 or less completion candidates, don't pop up
        ;; a window, just cycle through them.
        completion-cycle-threshold 3

        ;; Cycle through completion options vertically, not
        ;; horizontally.
        completions-format 'vertical

        ;; Sort recently used completions first.
        completions-sort 'historical

        ;; Only show up to 10 lines in the completions window.
        completions-max-height 10

        ;; Don't show the unneeded help string at the top of the
        ;; completions buffer.
        completion-show-help nil

        ;; Add the 'initials' completion style to the default list.
        completion-styles '(basic partial-completion initials))

;; Consider setting `completion-category-overrides` to customize
;; individual minibuffer prompts with different completion-styles,
;; sorting, etc.