Demo of my Minibuffer and Completions in Tandem (mct.el) for Emacs
Enhancements for the default completion UI
Raw link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roSD50L2z-A
In this video I showcase my new package, mct.el. It makes the default
completion experience feel closer to what you get with vertically
aligned third-party completion interfaces, by only re-using built-in
functionality and its own glue code.
Quoting from its documentation:
Minibuffer and Completions in Tandem, also known as “MCT”, “Mct”, mct, or mct.el, is a package that enhances the default minibuffer and
*Completions*buffer of Emacs 28 (or higher) so that they work together as part of a unified framework. The idea is to make the presentation and overall functionality be consistent with other popular, vertically aligned completion UIs while leveraging built-in functionality.The main feature set that unifies the minibuffer and the
*Completions*buffer consists of commands that cycle between the two, making it seem like they are part of a contiguous space.MCT tries to find a middle ground between the frugal defaults and the more opinionated completion UIs. This is most evident in its approach on how to present completion candidates. Instead of showing them outright or only displaying them on demand, MCT implements a minimum input threshold as well as a slight delay before it pops up the
*Completions*buffer and starts updating it to respond to user input.Customisation options control the input threshold (
mct-minimum-input) and the delay between live updates (mct-live-update-delay). Similarly, a blocklist and a passlist for commands are on offer.
MCT is not available in any package archive for the time being, though I
do plan to submit it to GNU ELPA. In the meantime, you will have to
install it manually or with the help of straight.el, quelpa, or
similar. Its source code: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/mct (a
Github mirror exists as well).
Those familiar with my dotemacs may
notice that mct.el is derived from my now-deprecated
prot-minibuffer.el library. The longer-term plan is to turn every
piece of my custom code into its own package or submit it as a patch for
emacs.git (as we did with the auto-renaming feature of EWW
buffers).