Re: want user option for pop-to-buffer to split window horizontally not vertically

[Juri Linkov]

>     window.c:3583:    window = Fsplit_window (window, Qnil, Qnil);
>     window.c:3597:        window = Fsplit_window (window, Qnil, Qnil);
>
>     My patch replaces nil in these two places with the value of a new
>     user option which is nil by default.
>
> With that option, a user could elect either "always vertical"
> or "always horizontal".  Is that really enough improvement?

My one-year experience with using "always horizontal" instead of
"always vertical" shows that in all cases that I tried this behavior
was expected and desirable.

However, there are some modes (like Calendar or Value Menu windows in
Customize) that doesn't take into account a window configuration where
windows are already split horizontally.  Such window configurations can be
created even by using `C-x 3', so fixing these modes to work with
horizontally split windows is a separate question.

> I would rather add a hook that's more general, but after the release.

Such a hook should have an argument for the buffer name (the same as the
first argument of display-buffer).  So setting this hook directly to
split-window-vertically or split-window-horizontally is not possible,
because these functions don't accept a buffer name argument.

Another variant is to add a user option with a list of buffer name regexps
that require horizontal split, but such a list is less general than a hook.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/