[slime-devel] Re: slime-apropos-package doesn't work with readtable-case = :invert

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

+ Marco Baringer <mb at bese.it>:

| the "problem" here is that the completions are leading you to supply
| the wrong package name. I assume that if you ignored the completions
| and wrote the package-names yourself, in lower case, everything would
| Just Work right?

Er, no, the completing-read upcases the package name anyway, even if I
carefully avoid hitting the TAB key.  In any case, it should not offer
package names that will not work in the context they're going to be
used anyhow.

| > Surely, there is some inconsistency, but I can't tell which part can
| > be corrected without introducing another inconsistency.
| 
| i think we can make swank:list-all-package-names smarter, but i
| wouldn't touch anything post completing-read (iow i wouldn't change
| how we process package names but, at most, how we help the user type
| them)

So we're basically assuming that the user will think of package names
as symbols, to be read according to the current value of
(readtable-case *readtable*), and should make
swank:list-all-package-names do the right thing: Invert if necessary,
and escape if necessary.  So if (readtable-case *readtable*) is
:upcase and the package name is "foo" then what goes in the list is
"|foo|".  The user will have to use the initial vertical bar in order
for completion to succeed, but that's a reasonable price to pay for
naming packages in un-nameable ways I suppose.  8-)

Oh, wait a minute.  slime-repl-set-package works differently: It
treats package names like strings, not symbols.  Shouldn't the two
functions treat package names identically?  Are you suggesting we
change the behaviour of slime-repl-set-package as well?

- Harald