UI options, add annotation function?

[bdarcus]

Right now, the UI presents a single, undifferentiated, formatted propertized display string, but internally searches using a different string.

This works well, though does result in some problems with multiple candidate selection currently (see #17).

But there's room with completing-read to use annotations for secondary bits of supporting information. Affixation (recently added to Emacs 28) obviously fits here too, though am unclear on the connection between them.

Is there value in rethinking the UI a bit to take advantage of that, and adding an annotation and/or affixation function to support it, either here or in a separate package?

If yes, how would that look, and what should that function generate?

Perhaps prefixes with nice icon fonts to indicate presence of pdfs, notes, or links?

Maybe a suffix with the key, type, and maybe tags?

If yes, the actually displayed string would be more compact (say just author, date, title?) to make room.

Something like this, with blue box indicating main display, and yellow affixes:

Maybe it's user-configurable?

Also, early in these discussions, @minad suggested the possibility of a separate package for annotation.

I suppose this ultimately depends just how rich these annotation/affix-based UIs can be now; what improvement they might offer.

Ideally, though, it would simultaneously enhance both the default orientation towards selectrum completion, while also opening up other opportunities.

Or we just don't worry about it for now; it's easy enough to add later, and it might be wise to allow these features to mature in Emacs

If someone does want to experiment with this, and believes to have come up with a better UI, do post screenshots.

See also #20.