(patch) sort cycling completion candidates (was: bbdb-complete-name return value)
Attached please find a patch to sort cycling completion candidates by the text property :completion-cycle-penalty (lower is better). Thanks Ted === modified file 'lisp/minibuffer.el' --- lisp/minibuffer.el 2011-02-12 18:30:13 + +++ lisp/minibuffer.el 2011-03-08 14:51:07 + @@ -704,7 +704,19 @@ (when last (setcdr last nil) ;; Prefer shorter completions. - (setq all (sort all (lambda (c1 c2) ( (length c1) (length c2) + (setq + all + (sort all + (lambda (c1 c2) + (let ((s1 (get-text-property + 0 :completion-cycle-penalty c1)) + (s2 (get-text-property + 0 :completion-cycle-penalty c2))) + (cond ((and s1 s2) (cond (( s1 s2) t) + (( s1 s2) nil) + (t ( (length c1) (length c2) + (s1 t) + (s2 nil)) ;; Prefer recently used completions. (let ((hist (symbol-value minibuffer-history-variable))) (setq all (sort all (lambda (c1 c2) -- What You Don't Know About Data Connectivity CAN Hurt You This paper provides an overview of data connectivity, details its effect on application quality, and explores various alternative solutions. http://p.sf.net/sfu/progress-d2d___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
I thought that would be easier too, but it's counter-intuitive. It's only counter intuitive if you think of it (and name it) something like score. So yes, we need another name to make it less counter-intuitive. E.g. `completion-penalty'. And I think it would be good to make it clear that this is for cycling, so the name could be `completion-cycle-penalty'. Stefan ! (let ((s1 (get-text-property 0 :completion-score c1)) ! (s2 (get-text-property 0 :completion-score c2))) ! (cond ((and s1 s2) ( s1 s2)) ! (s1 t) ! (s2 nil) BTW, I'd rather use something like ! (let ((s1 (get-text-property 0 :completion-score c1)) ! (s2 (get-text-property 0 :completion-score c2))) ! (cond ((and s1 s2) (cond (( s1 s2) t) ! (( s1 s2) nil) ! (t ( (length c1) (length c2) ! (s1 t) ! (s2 nil) PS: Please Cc the patch to emacs-devel because I don't read this bbdb-list as regularly. -- What You Don't Know About Data Connectivity CAN Hurt You This paper provides an overview of data connectivity, details its effect on application quality, and explores various alternative solutions. http://p.sf.net/sfu/progress-d2d ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:50:20 -0500 Stefan Monnier monn...@iro.umontreal.ca wrote: The only thing I need to clarify is sorting. Right now shorter string wins. In the new method, higher score should win. SM I think it's easier if lower scores win, so it's consistent with the SM current use of `length'. It's really not a big issue: just negate the SM values you put on the property and you're done. I thought that would be easier too, but it's counter-intuitive. Well, here's the patch. It doesn't check that the completion score is a number but otherwise seems OK to me. A string with a completion score always wins over one without. Ted === modified file 'lisp/minibuffer.el' *** lisp/minibuffer.el 2011-02-12 18:30:13 + --- lisp/minibuffer.el 2011-03-01 15:39:33 + *** *** 704,710 (when last (setcdr last nil) ;; Prefer shorter completions. ! (setq all (sort all (lambda (c1 c2) ( (length c1) (length c2) ;; Prefer recently used completions. (let ((hist (symbol-value minibuffer-history-variable))) (setq all (sort all (lambda (c1 c2) --- 704,719 (when last (setcdr last nil) ;; Prefer shorter completions. ! (setq !all !(sort all ! (lambda (c1 c2) !(let ((s1 (get-text-property 0 :completion-score c1)) ! (s2 (get-text-property 0 :completion-score c2))) ! (cond ((and s1 s2) ( s1 s2)) !(s1 t) !(s2 nil) !(t ( (length c1) (length c2 ;; Prefer recently used completions. (let ((hist (symbol-value minibuffer-history-variable))) (setq all (sort all (lambda (c1 c2) -- Free Software Download: Index, Search Analyze Logs and other IT data in Real-Time with Splunk. Collect, index and harness all the fast moving IT data generated by your applications, servers and devices whether physical, virtual or in the cloud. Deliver compliance at lower cost and gain new business insights. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-dev2dev ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:17:05 -0500 Stefan Monnier monn...@iro.umontreal.ca wrote: TZ Maybe accept the score as a property to the candidate strings and use TZ that property, if it exists, instead of the string length? TZ That would side-step the current completion mechanism nicely, requiring TZ little extra code except in the final sort of candidates. If the TZ strings aren't mangled by the completion mechanism, of course--but I TZ don't think they are after a quick scan. SM That would work. It's a quicksimple solution (i.e. generally a good SM sign), but it has one drawback: the properties will be often added SM without being used, since the list of completions is used not only to SM build the *Completions* buffer or to cycle through completions but also SM to do TAB completion (often just handled by try-completion, but with SM substring completion it instead needs to get the all-completions list SM and then weed it out). SM So it has a performance downside (which means, it's not the last word in SM this respect), but I'd probably accept a patch to add such a feature to SM minibuffer.el since the performance impact is only incurred by SM completion tables that really use the feature and it's unlikely to be SM a serious maintenance problem in the future. So something like this would work in `completion-all-sorted-completions': (or (get-text-property 0 :completion-score (propertize hello :completion-score 100)) 0) = 100 ...and we're adding an extra `get-text-property' call to all the sorts: (or (get-text-property 0 :completion-score hello) 0) = 0 ...which should not be a big deal since it's just a plist lookup. The only thing I need to clarify is sorting. Right now shorter string wins. In the new method, higher score should win. So I propose these rules: - if both have the :completion-score property, sort by highest score first - if one has it, put it first - if neither has it, shorter string wins Let me know if you agree and I'll propose the code+doc patch. Thanks Ted -- Free Software Download: Index, Search Analyze Logs and other IT data in Real-Time with Splunk. Collect, index and harness all the fast moving IT data generated by your applications, servers and devices whether physical, virtual or in the cloud. Deliver compliance at lower cost and gain new business insights. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-dev2dev ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
The only thing I need to clarify is sorting. Right now shorter string wins. In the new method, higher score should win. I think it's easier if lower scores win, so it's consistent with the current use of `length'. It's really not a big issue: just negate the values you put on the property and you're done. Stefan -- Free Software Download: Index, Search Analyze Logs and other IT data in Real-Time with Splunk. Collect, index and harness all the fast moving IT data generated by your applications, servers and devices whether physical, virtual or in the cloud. Deliver compliance at lower cost and gain new business insights. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-dev2dev ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Wed Feb 23 2011 Ted Zlatanov wrote: SM Currently, the cycling code is fairly naive and it uses a fixed ordering SM based on string length (shorter first). Patches to make it more SM customizable (by the completion table, not just by the end-user) would SM be very welcome (e.g. for file completion, it could first cycle through SM VCS-managed files). TZ Maybe accept the score as a property to the candidate strings and use TZ that property, if it exists, instead of the string length? TZ That would side-step the current completion mechanism nicely, requiring TZ little extra code except in the final sort of candidates. If the TZ strings aren't mangled by the completion mechanism, of course--but I TZ don't think they are after a quick scan. Should I pursue this myself or are you guys (Stefan or Roland) interested in doing it? It appears to me that any such things should be implemented as a feature of the generic completion code of emacs. To the best of my knowledge, this is something that Stefan has worked on a lot (and done a great job!). Yet I simply do not know his strategies. So I do not know how your specific suggestion would relate to his plans. Roland -- Free Software Download: Index, Search Analyze Logs and other IT data in Real-Time with Splunk. Collect, index and harness all the fast moving IT data generated by your applications, servers and devices whether physical, virtual or in the cloud. Deliver compliance at lower cost and gain new business insights. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-dev2dev ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
TZ Maybe accept the score as a property to the candidate strings and use TZ that property, if it exists, instead of the string length? TZ That would side-step the current completion mechanism nicely, requiring TZ little extra code except in the final sort of candidates. If the TZ strings aren't mangled by the completion mechanism, of course--but I TZ don't think they are after a quick scan. That would work. It's a quicksimple solution (i.e. generally a good sign), but it has one drawback: the properties will be often added without being used, since the list of completions is used not only to build the *Completions* buffer or to cycle through completions but also to do TAB completion (often just handled by try-completion, but with substring completion it instead needs to get the all-completions list and then weed it out). So it has a performance downside (which means, it's not the last word in this respect), but I'd probably accept a patch to add such a feature to minibuffer.el since the performance impact is only incurred by completion tables that really use the feature and it's unlikely to be a serious maintenance problem in the future. Stefan -- Free Software Download: Index, Search Analyze Logs and other IT data in Real-Time with Splunk. Collect, index and harness all the fast moving IT data generated by your applications, servers and devices whether physical, virtual or in the cloud. Deliver compliance at lower cost and gain new business insights. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-dev2dev ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 11:09:28 -0600 Ted Zlatanov t...@lifelogs.com wrote: TZ On Mon, 14 Feb 2011 02:03:55 -0500 Stefan Monnier monn...@iro.umontreal.ca wrote: IMO the cycling should only be based on scores. That would, I think, accomplish all your items and produce less DWIM but that's not it. SM Currently, the cycling code is fairly naive and it uses a fixed ordering SM based on string length (shorter first). Patches to make it more SM customizable (by the completion table, not just by the end-user) would SM be very welcome (e.g. for file completion, it could first cycle through SM VCS-managed files). TZ Maybe accept the score as a property to the candidate strings and use TZ that property, if it exists, instead of the string length? TZ That would side-step the current completion mechanism nicely, requiring TZ little extra code except in the final sort of candidates. If the TZ strings aren't mangled by the completion mechanism, of course--but I TZ don't think they are after a quick scan. Should I pursue this myself or are you guys (Stefan or Roland) interested in doing it? Thanks Ted -- Free Software Download: Index, Search Analyze Logs and other IT data in Real-Time with Splunk. Collect, index and harness all the fast moving IT data generated by your applications, servers and devices whether physical, virtual or in the cloud. Deliver compliance at lower cost and gain new business insights. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-dev2dev ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Mon, 14 Feb 2011 02:03:55 -0500 Stefan Monnier monn...@iro.umontreal.ca wrote: IMO the cycling should only be based on scores. That would, I think, accomplish all your items and produce less DWIM but that's not it. SM Currently, the cycling code is fairly naive and it uses a fixed ordering SM based on string length (shorter first). Patches to make it more SM customizable (by the completion table, not just by the end-user) would SM be very welcome (e.g. for file completion, it could first cycle through SM VCS-managed files). Maybe accept the score as a property to the candidate strings and use that property, if it exists, instead of the string length? That would side-step the current completion mechanism nicely, requiring little extra code except in the final sort of candidates. If the strings aren't mangled by the completion mechanism, of course--but I don't think they are after a quick scan. Ted -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Tue Feb 15 2011 Stefan Monnier wrote: In any case, it appears to me that this function is one of the features of BBDB some people really like, so that at best one could use alternative approach and let the users choose what they want. I think it makes a lot of sense to provide: - bbdb-complete-name, behaving as it currently does. - an appropriate function on completion-at-point-functions; with the current state of completion-at-point, this will probably not be very usable, but we can work (on the Emacs side) to make it better. Much agreed! Roland -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Mon Feb 14 2011 Stefan Monnier wrote: - Individual completions can be pretty long. Not everybody has a short address f...@gnu.org. So just a few completions can easily occupy a lot of screen space, which adds to the confusion. I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to. My concerns are related to the *Completions* buffer. If every element in a completion list has just 10 or 20 characters, a *Completions* buffer with 30 or 40 elements is still managable in the sense that it will not take more than 10 or 12 screen lines that one can look over fairly quickly. If, on the other hand, the elements in the completion list have 50 or 60 characters (which can happen for email addresses plus real names), I find that the *Comletions* buffer is of little help. This is just my personal opinion. Maybe others are better in finding what they want. I think it's important to ensure that the original string appears somehow in the completion, to avoid such confusions. That's one of the basic ideas behind traditional completion. Personally, I much agree with you. And one of the reasons that I myself do not use bbdb-complete-name might be that somehow this command behaves too different from what I am used to in other emacs-related context. Yet I also agree that the approach implemented in bbdb-complete-name has has some justification for its particular purpose: We cannot ask people they should always use email addresses which contain their real name because that's what emacs cycling requires... Sometimes one might want to send an email to Joe Smith to his address f...@bar.com without including his real name. In any case, it appears to me that this function is one of the features of BBDB some people really like, so that at best one could use alternative approach and let the users choose what they want. One could possibly use text properties to mark allowed starting points for substring completion in a string like johnler...@bar.com We could also just accept CamelCase as a word boundary. It'd probably be just as easy to implement. Such word boundaries imply some restriction on possible completions. But personally I want to say: this should be good enough! (Anybody else wants to comment here?) (2) The algorithm needs to recognize which lexicographically unrelated mail addresses belong to one record so that cycling can be based on these entries only: The generic completion is basically designed to make that very difficult if not impossible: the user-provided string should appear somehow (the definition of this somehow depends on the completion style) in the suggested completions. I understand this point! - f...@bar.com and g...@baz.org might be addresses of the same person so that we want to cycle through them I think you can't do that with the generic completion code, but I also think this is not actually a feature. OTOH, the current code shouldn't have any trouble cycling between Henry Toto f...@bar.com and Henry Toto g...@baz.org if the user typed Henry T or even H T. Thanks! I might want to write an alternative bbdb-complete-name-2 that uses these features. Then people can choose the approach they like better. So if all possible completions were calcluated in advance, the completion list could become something like a list of sublists, where each sublist means: these different strings should be considered for cycling. The completion table can be a function: there's no need to precompute all possible completions. Thanks, that's a very good point. This function could also translate a precomputed completion table using a format convenient for BBDB into the standard format, as needed. I need to think about how this could possibly simplify things. combines these concepts. Namely, it should be customizable whether mail-abbrev expansion is tried first and then the completion command tries to use BBDB records for completion; or we do these steps in opposite order. You can use completion-table-in-turn to combine two completion tables into a new one that only considers the second when the first did not find any candidates. This said, this sometimes doesn't interacts too well with non-prefix completions (these are bugs, tho, so we should be hopefully able to fix them). Again, thanks for your help with these things. I need to think about this more carefully. Roland -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
IMO the cycling should only be based on scores. That would, I think, accomplish all your items and produce less DWIM but that's not it. Currently, the cycling code is fairly naive and it uses a fixed ordering based on string length (shorter first). Patches to make it more customizable (by the completion table, not just by the end-user) would be very welcome (e.g. for file completion, it could first cycle through VCS-managed files). Do you have any thoughts / plans on implementing something like that for the generic completion code? Directly, no. But adding hooks so that the completion table can come with its own sorting function, yes. Stefan -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Fri Feb 11 2011 Stefan Monnier wrote: To tell you the truth, the infrastructure might have some missing elements, but I'm interested in addressing those issues. Some more thoughts on this: - One problem with completion in BBDB can be that if the algorithm isn't optimized enough for its particular problem, it happens too easily that the algorithm offers too many completions, so that identifying the right ones becomes the search for a needle in a haystick - which in the end is of little help. - Individual completions can be pretty long. Not everybody has a short address f...@gnu.org. So just a few completions can easily occupy a lot of screen space, which adds to the confusion. - In the end, BBDB can consider quite many criteria for possibly including an address in the completion set (first names, last names, AKAs, organizations, mail addresses,...). Sometimes I wonder myself: why am I getting this completion here?? (And I am getting very distracted by this kind of stuff...) Of course, this behavior is customizable, but next time you miss the completion you were aiming for... So I would suggest the following BBDB task sheet for a generic completion algorithm that could possibly replace the current code in bbdb-complete-mail: (1) Substring completion needs to have some understanding of the text that is completed so that completion starting points within the full strings are meaningful: - typing `ler' should complete `john leremy l...@bar.com' or `johnler...@bar.com' (or even `johnler...@bar.com'), but not `Joe Miller j...@bar.com' - typing `com' should only complete to your buddy's name `John Combs co...@bar.org' but never j...@bar.com ...you can easily figure out more such examples. One could possibly use text properties to mark allowed starting points for substring completion in a string like johnler...@bar.com (2) The algorithm needs to recognize which lexicographically unrelated mail addresses belong to one record so that cycling can be based on these entries only: - f...@bar.com and g...@baz.org might be addresses of the same person so that we want to cycle through them - f...@bar.com and f...@baz.com might be addresses for different persons so that cycling makes no sense. (The latter is to some extent a matter of taste. In any case, this is the currently implemented behavior of bbdb-complete-mail.) So if all possible completions were calcluated in advance, the completion list could become something like a list of sublists, where each sublist means: these different strings should be considered for cycling. (3) Before I started to use BBDB, I only used mail-abbrev-complete-alias for completing mail abbrevs. I'd like to have a way that combines these concepts. Namely, it should be customizable whether mail-abbrev expansion is tried first and then the completion command tries to use BBDB records for completion; or we do these steps in opposite order. Probably, this can be achieved if both mail-abbrev-complete-alias and bbdb-complete-mail use non-nil return values if they did something and nil otherwise -- which was the original question for bbdb-complete-mail that started this thread. Then, a wrapper around these commands could try each of them in a customizable order. Roland -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Thu Feb 10 2011 Stefan Monnier wrote: Since BBDB3 only works on Emacs 23, its completion could use completion-at-point-functions and/or completion-in-region. I looked into completion-in-region. Here the problem is that the completion done by bbdb-complete-name is not a comventional completion. If you type a name appearing in a BBDB record, bbdb-complete-name replaces this name by the email address for this record. Yet the name and the email address can be completely different. I have not yet looked into completion-at-point-functions whether it can handle this kind of unusual behavior. In any event, a simple t after (run-hooks 'bbdb-complete-mail-hook) does the trick, but it probably needs to be changed in some other places. Note also that I've already installed a hack in message.el (at least in Emacs's trunk) that checks that the buffer really was not modified before trusting a nil return value from bbdb, to work around the problem. Thanks, that's good. Anyway, it might take more time till people might switch to BBDB 3 and the problem exists both with the old and the current BBDB. Roland -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Fri Feb 11 2011 Stefan Monnier wrote: Indeed, we have a problem here, and I think that part of the problem is on the side of bbdb-complete-name's behavior: it should include the name (with quotes) along with the email address so that it is actually a completion rather than a lookup. Of course, that won't fix it all, since the kind of completion it would then offer would still not be prefix completion, so you'd have to make sure you use something like `substring' in completion-styles (and that was not available in Emacs-23). I am really not sure how BBDB email completeion could be squeezed into the usual emacs completion styles. Say, we are talking about the email address Joe Smith f...@bar.org Now the idea is that typing foo would give you the above line. Also, this command implements the concept of cycling, which is yet more orthogonal to usual completion: If Joe Smith also has the email sm...@baz.com and you apply this command to the above (already expanded) email address, you can cycle through all (properly expanded) email addresses of Joe Smith. On the other hand, I am not sure whether it's worth the effort to try to use more sophisticated high-level functions for this problem. (Maybe my problem is that I do not know the latest GNU Emacs completion goodies I am missing without these high-level functions.) In any case, currently the most complicated part of bbdb-complete-mail calculates possible completions. But inserting them requires just three lines: (let ((completion-base-position (list beg end))) (with-output-to-temp-buffer *Completions* (display-completion-list dwim-completions))) which is already based on some more recent code for performing completions. Cheers, Roland -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Fri Feb 11 2011 Stefan Monnier wrote: Joe Smith f...@bar.org Now the idea is that typing foo would give you the above line. `substring' completion does that since `foo' is a substring of the above string. Fine! Also, this command implements the concept of cycling, which is yet more orthogonal to usual completion: Welcome to completion-cycle-threshold. Here I am stuck! Certainly I cannot claim that I understood completion-cycle-threshold which seems to be unknown to my current emacs 23.2.93. More importantly, my problem is that BBDB cycling refers to different email addresses for one record. So in that case different completions might not have any common substring. So any generic completion algorithm needs to communicate to BBDB whether it wants to perform completion based on a common substring or based on cycling. I guess it's fair to say that within bbdb-complete-mail (that you can look at) the smaller part of the code tries to figure out what type of completion is requested. But the larger part then generates the appropriate completion table (where the elements need to be calculated based on the content of the database). To tell you the truth, the infrastructure might have some missing elements, but I'm interested in addressing those issues. bbdb-complete-mail is certainly one of the more intransparent pieces of code in BBDB. If this can be changed, I'll definitely appreciate it! Roland -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
Currently bbdb-complete-mail (the new name of bbdb-complete-name) really has no well-defined return values whatsoever. Would it help if it returned non-nil whenever it had done something? Yes, that's generally the expected behavior of completion functions. Would this be the right thing?? Since BBDB3 only works on Emacsā„23, its completion could use completion-at-point-functions and/or completion-in-region. Stefan -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
In any event, a simple t after (run-hooks 'bbdb-complete-mail-hook) does the trick, but it probably needs to be changed in some other places. Note also that I've already installed a hack in message.el (at least in Emacs's trunk) that checks that the buffer really was not modified before trusting a nil return value from bbdb, to work around the problem. Stefan -- The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
Hi, thanks for looking into it! 06/02/11 17:45, Roland Winkler On Fri Feb 4 2011 Antoine Levitt wrote: I've got an issue with the bbdb-complete-name function. It seems you are using BBDB 2.xx. Recently BBDB has been upgraded significantly. You might want to try BBDB 3 which is avaiable at http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/bbdb/?root=bbdb To check it out, use cvs -d:pserver:anonym...@cvs.sv.gnu.org:/sources/bbdb co bbdb Ah, thanks! I tried using the sourceforge CVS, but it was down. Anyway, I just updated to latest CVS (bbdb-version: BBDB version 3.02 ($Date: 2011/01/16 18:03:33 $)), and the problem is still the same. When using another completion in message mode, such as (setq message-tab-body-function (lambda () (interactive) (dabbrev-expand nil))) , a successful BBDB completion also triggers the dabbrev-expand completion. I am not sure I understand your problem. (I am not using message-mode myself.) The way message, as insinuated by bbdb, works, is that it calls bbdb first, and then if the return value is nil, calls message-tab-body-function : see message-tab and message-expand-name. Therefore, message depends on the return value of bbdb-complete-name. Without going into the details of message, simply type Bo and eval (bbdb-complete-name) in a buffer. If it completes to a single name, it returns nil, which is not the behaviour relied upon by message (and possibly other MUAs). Antoine -- The modern datacenter depends on network connectivity to access resources and provide services. The best practices for maximizing a physical server's connectivity to a physical network are well understood - see how these rules translate into the virtual world? http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnlfb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
Re: bbdb-complete-name return value
On Sun Feb 6 2011 Antoine Levitt wrote: When using another completion in message mode, such as (setq message-tab-body-function (lambda () (interactive) (dabbrev-expand nil))) , a successful BBDB completion also triggers the dabbrev-expand completion. I am not sure I understand your problem. (I am not using message-mode myself.) The way message, as insinuated by bbdb, works, is that it calls bbdb first, and then if the return value is nil, calls message-tab-body-function : see message-tab and message-expand-name. Therefore, message depends on the return value of bbdb-complete-name. Without going into the details of message, simply type Bo and eval (bbdb-complete-name) in a buffer. If it completes to a single name, it returns nil, which is not the behaviour relied upon by message (and possibly other MUAs). I see! It seems we have here another example that other code has evolved, but BBDB is still behaving in some kind of old-fashioned way. Currently bbdb-complete-mail (the new name of bbdb-complete-name) really has no well-defined return values whatsoever. Would it help if it returned non-nil whenever it had done something? Would this be the right thing?? Possibly, we should continue this discussion on some other list, Roland -- The modern datacenter depends on network connectivity to access resources and provide services. The best practices for maximizing a physical server's connectivity to a physical network are well understood - see how these rules translate into the virtual world? http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnlfb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
bbdb-complete-name return value
Hi, I've got an issue with the bbdb-complete-name function. When using another completion in message mode, such as (setq message-tab-body-function (lambda () (interactive) (dabbrev-expand nil))) , a successful BBDB completion also triggers the dabbrev-expand completion. Suppose I've got Bob as only contact beginning with Bo. When I type Bo TAB in a To: header, Bob is completed, but I also get the dabbrev-expand (sometimes inserting garbage when I have a SMTP trace buffer open). I traced it to bbdb's return value in bbdb-complete-name: ;; call the exact-completion hook (run-hooks 'bbdb-complete-name-hooks))) I'm not entirely sure what the return value should be in all circumstances, but in the one described above it should be t, so that message doesn't try to complete. Antoine -- The modern datacenter depends on network connectivity to access resources and provide services. The best practices for maximizing a physical server's connectivity to a physical network are well understood - see how these rules translate into the virtual world? http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnlfb ___ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
