Toggling preview during completion

[dalgong]

Sometimes I want to enable/disable preview while running a consult command, not pre-configuring with consult-config or preview-key. For example, while M-x consult-recent-file, I enjoy looking the preview of files until I hit files mounted from sshfs, etc which is very slow and I want to disable preview momentarily.

[minad]

Thank you for the feature proposal. I have considered this but decided against it. It is not possible to configure Consult such that it supports enabling/disabing preview during the session and I am not inclined to change this. The use case you are describing won't work well, since at the point where you have hit a sshfs file it is already to late and you are already observing the slowdown.

In other cases related to consult-buffer there are similar bad side effects (e.g. when using EXWM or Tramp), where Emacs hangs or the windows are rearranged in an undesired way. See also the issues #178, #186, #204 and #224. There are multiple solutions for the problem, but they all require a bit of configuration effort.

• Filter the candidates such that preview is disabled for the problematic candidates. This is the preferred solution for Tramp and EXWM when using consult-buffer, see the wiki configuration https://github.com/minad/consult/wiki#do-not-preview-exwm-windows-or-tramp-buffers. However this solution won't work directly for consult-recent-file, which is not based on multi sources. It is possible to create a consult--multi based recent file command, which has two sources: One source with enabled preview, which includes only non-sshfs files and one source which includes only the sshfs files and does not have preview.

• You could however create an additional command which has preview, but does not show the problematic sshfs files.

(defun consult-recent-file-without-sshfs ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((recentf-list (compute-the-filtered-recentf-list-here))) ;; filter the list of recent files
     (consult-recent-file))

• Overwrite the :state function of the consult-recent-file command, such that sshfs files are filtered there, but this goes a bit deeper into the internals of the library. You can define your custom preview function which performs the filtering according to your preferences.

• You may still want to consider disabling automatic previews for consult-recent-file only. You can even set two manual preview keys S-up and S-down for example, such that you can scroll over the candidate list with preview. See https://github.com/minad/consult/wiki#configure-s-ups-down-preview-keys.

Please let me know if any of the solutions I described here work for you.

[minad]

I experimented a bit and it is actually easy to enable/disable preview during an active session. I documented this in the wiki, see https://github.com/minad/consult/wiki#toggle-preview-during-active-completion-session. I won't support this officially but it should be possible to use this in your case.

(defvar-local consult-toggle-preview-orig nil)

(defun consult-toggle-preview ()
  "Command to enable/disable preview."
  (interactive)
  (if consult-toggle-preview-orig
      (setq consult--preview-function consult-toggle-preview-orig
            consult-toggle-preview-orig nil)
    (setq consult-toggle-preview-orig consult--preview-function
          consult--preview-function #'ignore)))

(define-key selectrum-minibuffer-map (kbd "M-P") #'consult-toggle-preview)

[floli]

I may add a question to this issue: Is is possible to show previews only for files that are already opened, e.g. no preview for recent files? Use case it that whenever I have a recent python or c++ file accidentely previews lsp-mode starts up which needs some time for large projects and slows down selection.

[minad]

@floli Yes, such a configuration is documented in the README. Search for consult-customize.

[agzam]

@minad I'd like to set consult-preview-key for everything but keep 'any for consult-line, i.e., disable auto-preview everywhere except "swiper". Do I have to tweak it using consult-customize ? Can't figure this out.

[minad]

@agzam Yes, consult-customize is the answer. See the examples in the README.

[agzam]

Oh, yes, I figured it out. It was obscured by Doom's internals.

(consult-customize +default/search-buffer :preview-key 'any)

worked for me. Thank you!

[agzam]

@minad I'm sorry, one more question (I really couldn't figure out where to post it).

for grouped results e.g., search results across buffers - is there a way to jump to previous/next group? Thank you.

[minad]

Yes, there is. Please read the Consult and Vertico READMEs. I am afraid, but sometimes there is no other way than reading the manual or at least use grep/consult-line on them. 🤷

[agzam]

Yes, I apologize for the noise. I feel stupid, I knew this, but somehow for a moment I forgot. I'm trying to multi-task here, and it's not working well :).

I just needed to check vertico-map keybindings. vertico-next-group is right there. Sorry for being a nuisance.

[agzam]

Oh, actually I figured out something pretty cool, while being a major annoyance to you:

(define-key vertico-map (kbd "]") #'vertico-next-group)
(define-key vertico-map (kbd "[") #'vertico-previous-group)

And if you need to type square bracket (which let's admit, doesn't happen very often), you can do C-q [

[minad]

And if you need to type square bracket (which let's admit, doesn't happen very often), you can do C-q [

Yes, this is something I find interesting. One could make much greater use of C-q and free more of the normal insert keys for specialized commands. I recently considered using this approach more in my config but so far didn't come up with actual scenarios where I would actually want that. Messing with keybindings is an endless rabbit hole.

[agzam]

Oh, yes, my favorite trick is this:

(map! :map flyspell-mode-map
      :i ",," #'flyspell-auto-correct-previous-word
      :i ", SPC" #'comma-smart-insert)

Sorry for the Doom-syntax, I think it's obvious what's happening here.