Subject: Re: bug#7779: Miserable widget completion for type 'directory on w32

From: Lennart Borgman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 00:31:47 +0200

On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 20:52, Juanma Barranquero <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 20:48, Lennart Borgman <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>>> It is? Can you show a test case?
>>>
>>>> - widget-complete is bound to M-TAB. This is by default bound to
>>>> Alt-Tab which is not available to applications on w32.
>>>
>>> But you can use <ESC><TAB>, like you yourself discuss in bug#8256.
>>
>> Didn't I say that you can't do that? If you use some vi emulation like Viper.
>
> Could you answer both questions, not only the second one?
>
> As for that, if M-TAB cannot be reliably used on Windows, and ESC-TAB
> cannot be used inside Viper, please propose an alternate binding for
> using inside Viper.

That might be a good suggestion, but I am not sure.

As everyone here no vi has two main states: input and command. Beside
that there are the normal Emacs key sequences states during input of
key sequences. (The clash between these states is why ESC-TAB can not
be used.)

For the "command" state the g key is unused. Using it directly would
be a waste, but a sequence beginning with g might be good.

But I am not very sure of the value of it since using it would require
switching to "command" state first. And I think you are most likely to
be in "input" mode if you want to do completion.

ESC is the only "control char" that I am using of those vi recognize
as its own. (The other are less important.)

I suggest finding a key sequence in Emacs that does not use M (Alt).
TAB by itself seems to be the favorite on EmacsWiki. Maybe use two
fast TABs for it by default. And have C-RET as backup?