ido-grid.el

This is a successor to ido-grid-mode. It does essentially the same thing (display ido prospects in a grid), but it’s rewritten to be faster and less flaky.

Installation

Use M-x package-install-file, or install from MELPA if I put it up there, or use el-get.

Using it

Everything can be made to work with M-x customize-group ido-grid. If you don’t like customize, you can use ido-grid-enable to switch it on.

Important custom settings

• ido-grid-rows - this is how many rows to show. If it’s a float, it does a proportion of the frame height, so 0.5 is 50% of frame height.
• ido-grid-max-columns - if not nil, only this many columns
• ido-grid-start-small - if this is t, then the grid will only come up with one row until you press up or down or otherwise invoke ido-grid-expand (you can bind this to a key by e.g.)

  (add-hook 'ido-setup-hook (lambda ()
                              (define-key ido-completion-map (kbd "M-SPC")
                                #'ido-grid-expand)))
      

• ido-grid-bind-keys - if this is t, then ido-grid will rebind the keys <up>, <down>, <left>, <right>, C-n and C-p in ido-completion-map, and will change ido-cannot-complete-command to ido-grid-down. Set this to nil and you can do your own key scheme as above.
• ido-grid-special-commands - this is a convenience to do different layout for different commands. For example, I have ido-occur configured with start-small off and max-columns equal to 1, so it displays in a vertical list. If you don’t like customize, you can do this kind of thing directly, e.g.

  (defun tall (o &rest args)
    (let ((ido-grid-max-columns 1) ;; single vertical col
          (ido-grid-start-small nil) ;; popup immediately
          (ido-grid-rows 0.5)) ;; 50% of frame height
      (apply o args)
      ))
  
  ;; make smex tall
  (advice-add 'smex :around #'tall)