Add the ability to customise how questions are asked

Discussed in https://github.com/copier-org/copier/discussions/673

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^{Originally posted by pfmoore May 23, 2022} The prompt currently appears to be a 🎤emoji, followed by the help (if specified), then the item name and a format prompt. I’d like to be able to change the prompt as I find it difficult to read (in particular, the format prompt is very distracting, and I’d like to omit it). Is that possible?</div>

Having checked the source code, it seems that this isn’t possible. But the questionary library looks very flexible, so it would be possible to do this if there was a way to describe the format in the template configuration. Would such a change be welcome? I’d be more than happy to work on a PR for this, but I’m very new to the project (I’m currently trying to migrate my existing cookiecutter templates over to copier) so I don’t know if that’s something that would be considered a reasonable feature for the project.

I’d imagine doing this via settings in the copier.yml file, so the format would be decided by the template, rather than by the user. Would that make sense?

[pfmoore]

My main concerns are:

1. I don’t find the “Format: {type}” section of the prompt useful, and the fact that it isn’t separated from the value by punctuation is very distracting.
2. The way the emoji is on the help line if there’s help, but on the variable name line if there’s a variable, is inconsistent and makes it hard for me to review what I entered.
3. It’s not at all obvious (to me, at least) how to word the help - as a question, or a description.

I think I’d prefer something like:

project_name:
    type: str
    help: Enter your project name
repeat:
    type: int

giving

🎤 Enter your project name: my_project 🎤 repeat: 12

So basically, "{emoji} {help_or_var_name}: "

If you wanted to include the type, maybe add " [{type}]" just before the colon, but only when it’s not “str”, so you would have:

🎤 Enter your project name: my_project 🎤 repeat [int]: 12

The emoji is OK, but it’s a bit of a personal preference. If copier had a “user settings” file, I’d suggest letting the user alter the emoji in that, but I don’t think it’s something you’d want on a command line. So maybe don’t worry about it for now.

[pfmoore]

FWIW in case we wanted to have this configurable, I think it should be configurable per user, not per template.

Possibly. But as we’ve seen, any given format typically works best with a particular style of help, so there’s an argument that it should be tied to the template as well. But as you say, that’s something to worry about another day 🙂

Also some other experience I had in mind was a fullscreen TUI with backwards and forward buttons to let you edit previous answers.

Maybe expose an API that can be used by 3rd parties, and let someone else do that for you? LOL, so many ideas, so little time.

I’ll do a PR in the next couple of days for the prompt change we’ve agreed. I’ll replace the > with 2 spaces as per your earlier message.