Re: Es and autocompleting

[Steve Kilbane <steve@whitecrow.demon.co.uk>]

> Completion is context-sensitive and requires knowledge of grammar and
> syntax, which vary from shell to shell.

Not necessarily. Depends on how much you do. I was thinking primarily
in terms of path searching. Adding simple expansions for internal
commands isn't hard.

> If you have to teach the window system how to do context-sensitive
> completion and history for csh, sh, rc, scsh, etc. you've now moved a lot
> of application-specific knowledge into the window system where it will
> never be kept up to date because a different vendor is responsible for
> maintaining it.

Actually, no. You move a pattern-match-and-replace process into the
window system. Everything else is configurable by an external file.
It won't get everything right every time, but then, DWIM never does.

> I don't understand what advantage is obtained in terms of UI, architecture,
> or overall code bloat.

Nor do I, but then I'm against completion in general.

steve