Re: [PATCH] Add completion styling

[Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com>]

>>>>> "Eli" == Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

Thanks for your comments.

>> Readline has a styling feature for completion -- if it is enabled, the
>> common prefix of completions will be displayed in a different style.
>> This doesn't work in gdb, because gdb implements its own completer.
>> 
>> This patch implements the feature.  However, it doesn't directly use
>> the Readline feature, because gdb can do a bit better: it can let the
>> user control the styling using the existing mechanisms.

Eli> Would it make sense to default to the style determined by the user's
Eli> colored-completion-prefix setting?

That's a bit of a pain because readline parses LS_COLORS on its own.
This doesn't seem to be documented anywhere.  I'm reluctant to try to
use readline's code, because it is using "_" prefixes; in readline these
indicate private items and there's at least one bug report about this in
bugzilla already (some distro made these hidden in the .so and it broke
gdb).

Eli> Also, do we want the default styling to be no-styling, or do we want
Eli> something else?

I would prefer to enable it by default.  It's easy to disable if one
prefers.

Eli> Btw, Emacs solves this problem differently: it uses a distinct styling
Eli> for the first character that distinguishes between completion
Eli> candidates.  I wonder if that idea is more useful for quickly
Eli> realizing what one needs to type next.  Or do we want to follow
Eli> Readline here for consistency reasons?

I think the Emacs idea is nice.  Maybe we want to let the user control
the prefix text, the "difference character", and the final completion
text.

Tom