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<code>completing-help.el</code> by YujiMinejima extends minibuffer input <code>display-completion-list</code> to show a description or help string with each completion choice.  Get it from the author at

: http://homepage1.nifty.com/bmonkey/emacs/index.html (Japanese)
: http://homepage1.nifty.com/bmonkey/emacs/index-en.html (English)

For example after enabling with <code>M-x turn-on-completing-help-mode</code> if you type "<code>M-x z ?</code>" the docstring of each "z" command is shown, as well the names.

There's a few help displays builtin.  On alist tables (STRING . STRING) the value part is shown, which is good for various general-purpose tables.  In an elisp package you can extend <code>completing-help-groups</code> to build help strings for particular tables.  If you use a table function then this is necessary to show help text.

As of <code>completing-help.el</code> version 3.13, Emacs 22 style symbols as the alist keys are not recognised by the general mechanism.  You may prefer (STRING . STRING) rather than (SYMBOL . STRING) anyway since the former will work in Emacs 21 as well as Emacs 22.

See also:

* [[Icicles - Help on Candidates]] -- Similar candidate help during completion. First line of doc string in mode line, complete help for any candidate by pressing a key. However, [[Icicles]] is a bigger library than ##completing-help.el## (because it does more).


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